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No. io 8 ] APPLETONS’ 

Town and Country Library 

JBLISHED SEMI-MONTHLY December i, 1892 $10.00 PER ANNUM 

JPJP-M_«_« umm ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ WMl- BJi ' M ■ m m m m m m m 

^^\^^^^^\\\\\\\\xx\\ \x^^xxxxx\\xxxxxxxx\xxx\xxxx\xx\xxv^\xxx\\\\\xxxxxxx x\^^ 


A COMEDY 
OF ELOPEMENT 

By CHRISTIAN REID 

Author of ^'Valerie Aylmer,” ‘‘Morton House,” etc. 



ENTERED AT THE POST-OFFICE AT NEW YORK AS SECOND-CLASS MAIL MATTER 


D. APPLETON & CO., NEW YORK 



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The Land of the Sun. {In preparation^ 


New York : D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, Publishers. 



A COMEDY 

OF ELOPEMENT 


BY 


CHRISTIAN REID 







• »V ^ 


'K 


AUTHOR OF 

MISS CHURCHILL, BONNY KATE, A SUMMER IDYL, MORTON HOUSE, 


VALERIE AYLMER, NINA’s ATONEMENT, HEART OF STEEL, ETC. 




”N.V 





NEW YORK 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

1893 




•I 


Copyright, 1892, 

By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 


Electrotyped and Printed 
AT THE Appleton Press, U, S. A. 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


PART I. 

I. 

The short December day was drawing to 
its close ; but, though the month was Decem- 
ber, the temperature was not that which is 
usually associated with the season. Instead of 
gray skies, leaden waters, and brown or snowy 
earth, there was a sky of glowing beauty, a 
glittering sea, and a land covered with the 
evergreen foliage of the South — for it was 
December in Florida. At noon the sun had 
shone with uncomfortable power on the broad 
plaza and old Spanish houses of St. Augus- 
tine ; but now that his last rays were gilding 
the ancient fort and the Moorish belfry of the 
cathedral, the air was full of that delicious soft- 
ness — a caressing warmth without heat — which 


2 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


in such latitudes makes the mere fact of exist- 
ence a delight. 

On the gray sea wall there were several 
loiterers ; but, as the sun finally sank, and the 
purple veil of twilight fell over land and sea, 
most of these departed, leaving only two girls, 
who still paced the narrow promenade, talking 
earnestly. 

At least one was talking earnestly — the 
other only listened. But the mere fact of list- 
ening can be eloquent sometimes, and this 
girl's face seemed made to express all things 
eloquently. It was a delicately molded face, 
with a pale complexion and the most gentle 
and lustrous eyes possible to imagine. As yet 
she was altogether immature in appearance 
and manner, being not more than fifteen years 
of age, but her slender figure gave indications 
of more than ordinary grace when time should 
have transformed its angles into curves, just as 
her face promised to prove even more than 
beautiful when u woman's soul should shine 
out of those eyes, now soft as a fawn's and in- 
nocent as a child's. 

Her companion was more ordinary in ap- 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


3 


pearance, yet nine people out of ten would 
have admired her most. She was an exceed- 
ingly pretty girl, and, being four or five years 
the senior of the two, possessed all the advan- 
tage of presence and of manner which such a 
difference in age at this period of life bestows. 
Her face had none of the delicate regularity 
of the face beside her, but her features were 
charmingly piquant, her complexion brilliantly 
fair, and her sunny, hazel eyes were full of 
mirth. At least they were usually full of 
mirth, but this evening there was a shade in 
them that looked like anxiety. It was she 
who had been talking for half an hour, while 
the girl who clung to her arm listened with 
rapt attention. As they still paced up and 
down in the twilight she went on : 

“You understand now, Aim^e, how it is, 
and how I am almost at my wit’s end to know 
what to do. I declare it is almost enough to 
make one wish one were ugly, to be torment- 
ed as I am ! ” 

“ I would not wish that,” said Aim6e. “ It 
is like a novel— only better— to be as pre1:ty as 
you are, and to know that two men love you 


4 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

to distraction ; that you are almost engaged to 
one, but that you love the other and are going 
to elope with him — ” 

“Hush!” cried the other, with a pressure 
of the arm she held almost as sharp as the 
tone of her voice. “ Think, if somebody were 
to hear you 1 I am not going to elope with 
him I That is just the point. I have prom- 
ised — but I can not, I can not ! I like him — 
of course, I like him — but I don’t like him 
well enough to ruin all my life for him, to 
give up everything and break mamma’s heart. 
Aim^e, I can’t do it.” 

“ What are you going to do, then 1 ” asked 
Aim^e, while her eyes seemed to grow mo- 
mently larger and darker and more full of in- 
terest. 

To an impressionable girl of fifteen, with 
her head full of romances, all this was thrilling 
beyond expression. A beautiful girl, a world- 
ly mother, two ardent suitors, and an elope- 
ment planned — what could any romance fur- 
nish better? Yet it was here in her own 
every-day world, and she was promoted to the 
dignity of receiving the confidences of the he- 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 5 

roine. What could life hold more exciting, 
save the joy, of which she as yet hardly 
dreamed, of being a heroine herself? 

“ What are you going to do ? ” she repeated 
in a voice as sweet and as full of dramatic ex- 
pression as her eyes. “If you have promised 
to go to-night, how can you break your prom- 
ise?” 

“ Breaking my promise does not matter at 
all,” said Fanny Berrien, impatiently ; “ but 
getting rid of Lennox Kyrle without trouble 
does matter. And how it is to be done I do 
not know, unless you will help me.” 

“ I will do anything — anything in the 
world ! ” said Aim^e, fervently. “ But how 
can you make up your mind to give him 
up?” 

“ It does not exactly mean giving him up,” 
said Fanny, “though I suppose it will come to 
that at last,” she added with a sigh. “ But 
just now I only want him to understand that 
it is quite impossible for me to go with him. 
He is so impetuous and rash, he will not un- 
derstand at all how I am placed ; and if I do 
not meet him at the time when he expects me, 


6 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


he will be quite capable of coming for me — as 
he has threatened to do — and then there would 
be a fearful state of affairs ! ” 

“He must be like young Lochinvar said 
Aim^e. “ I should think you would adore 
such a lover as that.” 

“He has given me more trouble than any 
other man in the world, so I suppose I ought 
to adore — or else hate him,” said Miss Ber- 
rien. “ Of course, you don't understand about 
these things, Aimde, and I ought not to be 
talking of them to a child like you, only I 
have nobody else to talk to ; but Lennox 
Kyrle is one of the men to whom one can't 
say no. He has more power over me than 
any one else in the world, and yet I am not at 
all sure that I want to marry him.” 

“ Why not } ” asked Aimde, who was drink- 
ing in these new ideas as a plant absorbs 
water. 

“ Oh, for a great many reasons,” replied the 
other. “ For one thing, I am not sure that I 
want to be domineered over for the rest of my 
life; and then he has nothing in the way of 
fortune — at least nothing to speak of. Now, 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. y 

Aim^e, you know it is not at all pleasant to 
want money and not have any.” 

“No,” said Aimde decidedly — she evident- 
ly understood this — “ it is not at all pleasant.” 

“And Mr. Meredith is rich, and will be 
richer ; and he is devoted to me, and mamma 
is anxious that I shall marry him, and I like 
him very well — when I don’t see Lennox ! So 
I have nearly made up my mind not to see 
him any more.” 

There was a pause. Aimde felt thafr this 
was a very unheroine-like decision, a lame and 
impotent conclusion for a romance ; but she 
did not know what to say, being somewhat 
confused by the multiplicity of new ideas pre- 
sented to her consideration. 

“At all events, I can not go to-night, 
though I was mad enough to promise him 
that I would,” pursued the young lady desper- 
ately. “ And I can not see him ; if I did, I 
should go. I am ashamed to think how little 
will of my own I have when I am with him — 
in fact, I have none at all. He simply makes 
me do whatever he likes. So I dare not go 
to meet him, and this brings me to the point 


8 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

I have been trying to reach all this time — 
will you go for me ? ” 

If she had asked Aim^e to spring from the 
wall into the waves washing softly against it, 
the girl could hardly have been more sur- 
prised. Her face showed this plainly, but after 
an instant’s hesitation she said : 

“ I will do anything that I can for you — 
where do you want me to go } ” 

“ It will not be pleasant at all, and I feel as 
if it was very selfish to ask it of you,” said 
Miss Berrien. “ But then you are only a 
child, and it can not compromise you as it 
would compromise me ; and you are as brave 
as a lion, so you won’t be afraid to come here 
after dark, will you } ” 

“ Here f ” said Aimde, glancing around. 

“ Y es, here,” answered her companion. “ A 
boat, with Lennox in it, will be here at mid- 
night. Y ou must tell him that I can not come, 
that I — But never mind, I will give the mes- 
sage at the time. Will you do it for me?” 

If Aimde’s courage failed at such a pros- 
pect, she felt that it would never do to betray 
as much. She had pledged herself to do “any- 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 9 

thing,” and she must not fail when something 
was demanded. 

“ Yes, I will do it,” she said, “ if there is no 
other way ; but why can you not write and let 
him know.^” 

“ Write !” repeated the other. “ Why, you 
foolish child, have I not told you where he 
is?” 

“ I don’t think you have,” said Aim^e — 
conscious, however, that in the multiplicity of 
statements which had been made to her, the 
particular statement relative to Mr. Kyrle’s 
whereabouts might not have received due at- 
tention. 

“He is there,” said Fanny with a compre- 
hensive wave of her hand toward the Atlantic 
Ocean. “ Did I not tell you that he is in a 
yacht ? ” 

“ Oh ! has he a yacht ? ” cried Aimee ; “ and 
can you refuse to go with him ? ” 

“ I might not refuse if it was his own yacht 
— for a man must be very rich to afford a 
yacht — but it is not his own. It is borrowed 
from a friend ‘for this occasion only,”’ said 
Fanny, with a slight laugh. “ His plan is cer- 


lO 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


tainly very well arranged. He borrows the 
yacht, as I have said, runs down here, lies off 
the inlet and brings a boat up to St. Augus- 
tine for me — I step into it, we return to the 
yacht, run to Key West or Pensacola and are 
married, then cruise for a month among the 
West Indies. How would you like such a 
programme as that, Aimde.?” 

“How would I like it ” repeated Aimde. 
Words were evidently too weak to express 
her sentiments ; but she clasped her hands and 
her eyes shone like stars. “ It would be glo- 
rious ! ” she cried, with a thrill in her voice. 
“ I never read of anything more beautiful. I 
don’t believe, I carUt believe, but that you 
mean to go.” 

“You may believe it, then,” said Miss 
Berrien, shortly. “It is very well to be ro- 
mantic when you don’t have to pay a price 
for romance; but when you do, and it is such 
a heavy one as a life of poverty — sailing and 
love-making can’t last forever, and what is to 
come after ? I asked myself that question, and 
the answer made me stop.” 

“ I wonder if it was not Mr. Meredith who 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


II 


made you stop?” said Aimde. "I saw the 
diamonds he brought you ; but, though dia- 
monds are very pretty, they are not as good 
as a lover like young Lochinvar ” 

“You will change your mind when you 
are a little older, my dear. Lovers are plenty, 
but diamonds — However, it is not certain 
that I will take them. It is only certain that I 
can not throw away everything by going with 
Lennox to-night. He must wait.” 

“ But perhaps he won't wait,” said Aimee. 
“ If he is so impetuous, perhaps he will say 
that it must be this night or never.” 

“There is no danger that he will say any- 
thing of the kind,” replied Fanny, with a com- 
fortable assurance of her own power. “He 
will never give me up until I am married to 
somebody else. He makes love like an angel,” 
she added, with a stifled sigh. “ I have had a 
great many lovers, of course, but nobody that 
I ever liked half as well as Lennox. But I 
must not think of him ; and as for seeing him 
— well, if I did that, I should be on board the 
Ariel before day. I will give my chance of a 
cruise over to you, Aimee.” 


12 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


“ I only wish I could take it ” said Aim^e, 
with the most evident sincerity. 

“Now we must go home,” said the other, 
glancing out at the darkening water. “But 
first come and let me show you exactly where 
the boat will be to-night.” 


\ 

! 

II. 

Twilight had given way to night, and 
the sky was thickset with golden stars, when 
the two girls reached the door of their board- 
ing house. A stream of light from the dining 
room, and a clatter of knives and forks and 
voices announced that supper was in progress, 
so they turned at once into that apartment. 

A party of about a dozen people — chiefly 
feminine — were gathered round the table. 
One of these, a handsome middle-aged lady, 
looked up when the two entered. 

“ Why are you so late, Fanny ? ” she asked. 
“ Y ou know that I do not like you to be out 
after dark without an escort.” 

“ But it is so hard to get in before dark, 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


13 


mamma,” said Miss Berrien, taking her place at 
the table. “ It is lovely on the sea wall at twi- 
light, and the air — oh, what a feeling it gives 
one ! Do you suppose it can be ozone ? — 
ozone in the air, I mean? Well ” — as nobody 
appeared able to answer this question — “what- 
ever it is, it is wonderful in its effect. My 
appetite is a most serious fact, and I am quite 
ready to do justice to your good things, Mrs. 
Shreve.” 

Mrs. Shreve — an elderly faded widow, who 
presided at the head of the table — smiled 
faintly. The faintness of the smile was not 
owing to any disapproval of her young board- 
er's appetite, but was due to the fact that, like 
a good many other estimable people, she lived 
persistently in the shadow rather than in the 
sunshine of life. 

“ I like to see people with good appetites. 
Miss Fanny,” she said in a tone which seemed 
to imply that appetites were perhaps a slight 
mitigation of the sadness of existence. “ Try 
the cup cakes ; they are nice to-night. — Why, 
Miss you are not eating anything ! ” 

“ I am not hungry, Mrs. Shreve,” replied 


14 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


Aim^e, who could not say that she was inca- 
pacitated by excitement from eating, and who 
looked with amazement at Fanny’s gastro- 
nomic performances. How a girl on the eve 
of a promised elopement, with a lover on his 
way to meet her, could exhibit such a keen 
appreciation of cup cakes and other delicacies 
was quite beyond Aimee’s comprehension. 

Her attention thus directed to the latter, 
Mrs. Berrien glanced at her. 

“ What is the matter with you, Aim^e ? ” 
she asked. “Your eyes are shining as if you 
had been listening to a ghost story.” 

“ She has been listening to a moral lec- 
ture,” said Miss Fanny, giving Aim^e an ad- 
monitory touch under the table, “ and she is 
reflecting upon it.” 

“Nothing is the matter with me. Aunt 
Alice,” said Aimee. “ I have no appetite — 
that is all.” 

“Want of appetite is very far from being 
the trifling thing that most people consider 
it,” said an elderly gentleman on the other side 
of the table, who certainly himself had no 
ground for complaint on that score. “ There 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


15 


is no effect without a cause, and no physical 
derangement which may not be attended with 
the most serious results. If people would only 
be warned in time — ” 

“ I suppose nobody would ever die,” inter- 
posed Fanny, a little flippantly ; and then, feel- 
ing that to talk of dying to a company chiefly 
composed of invalids was not the extreme of 
tact, she went on hastily : “ O mamma ! who 
do you suppose I met at the hotel to-day ? 
Your old friend Mr. Denham, who is here for 
his throat — that same throat of which he has 
been talking ever since I can remember. I 
also saw the English gentlemen who are going 
soon on that hunting expedition which Mr. 
Meredith thinks of joining, and which I should 
like to join, too.” 

“ I have no doubt the party would be glad 
to receive you as a recruit. Miss Berrien,” said 
one of the ladies with a smile. “ At least it is 
easy to answer for one member of it.” 

“ Yes, I think I might count on his vote ” 
returned Miss Berrien, composedly. 

After tea this young lady retired for some 
additions to her toilet, while Aim^e — who felt 


l6 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

as if she lived, moved, and had her being in a 
dream — went into the parlor and sat down 
ostensibly to read. She was usually a great 
bookworm, having been a devourer of all 
kinds of literature from her earliest childhood, 
and to-night she had a novel which at another 
time would have absorbed all her attention. 
But for once the letters danced before her eyes 
and conve3^ed no meaning to her mind. The 
romance of reality in which she was so soon to 
play a part engrossed all her thoughts. How 
would she acquit herself.? What would she 
be called upon to do.? How could Fanny 
possibly be so composed when her fate was 
hanging in the balance.? These questions 
formed the burden of Aim^e’s reflections, while 
her head was bent and her dark eyes rested on 
the open page of the book which she held. 

Suddenly, however, she roused with a start, 
for some one said, “ How are you, this even- 
ing, Mr. Meredith.?” and looking up she saw 
Miss Berrien's lover number two crossing the 
room. 

A man with whom the world went well 
and easily was Mr. Meredith, evidently. 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 1 7 

Rather short, rather stout, rather rubicund, but 
not ill-looking, and apparently not cast by 
Nature for that villainous part which is as- 
signed in melodramas to the obnoxious suitor, 
Aimee’s gaze followed him with a species of 
fascination. This man, commonplace as he 
appeared, was, unconsciously to himself, one of 
the dramatis personce in the romance now pro- 
ceeding. “If he could know!” thought the 
girl, with a thrill. 

Exemplifying the proverb that ignorance 
is sometimes bliss, Mr. Meredith sank easily 
into a seat and began talking to one or two 
people, without observing the solemn young 
eyes regarding him from a shady corner. “If 
he could know I ” Aimde thought again when 
Fanny entered, bright, sparkling, coquettish, 
and gave him her hand as he came eagerly 
forward to meet her. If there was a single 
weight on Miss Berrien’s mind, a single cloud 
on her spirit, no one could possibly have sus- 
pected it ; and Aimde began to wonder some- 
what if the whole thing was not a jest, when, 
in the midst of the lively banter which with 
Fanny generally did duty for conversation, she 


1 8 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

sent a sudden, swift glance across the room, 
which made the wondering girl understand 
that it was reality after all. 

The glance conveyed a warning, and fear- 
ing lest she might unguardedly betray to Mrs. 
Berrien’s quick observation that something 
unusual was in the atmosphere, Aimde rose 
and with her book in her hand went quietly 
from the room. As her slender young figure 
passed, two ladies near the door looked up 
and nodded a kindly good-night. 

“What a sweet girl that is!” said one of 
them. “ She seems the embodiment of gen- 
tleness.” 

“ She is so pretty, too,” said the other. “ At 
least, she promises to be pretty — and there is 
so much mind and soul in her face !” 

“ Poor child 1 I fancy it is doubtful what 
will become of her,” said the first speaker. 
“ Her father is dead, and her mother has mar- 
ried again — married a certain Major Josce- 
lyn, who is very much gone to pieces in all re- 
spects. I know the family well, and Mrs. Ber- 
rien was talking to me about the Joscelyns — 
whom she dislikes exceedingly — the other day. 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


19 


Aim^e, you see, is her brother's child, and for 
that reason she has her with her at present. ‘ I 
found that the Joscelyns were simply making 
her a drudge,’ she said, ‘ and her health was 
breaking down under it, so I decided to take 
her for a time at least. Perhaps, when Fanny 
is married, I may adopt her altogether.’ ” 

“ She can well afford to do so if Miss 
Fanny establishes herself in life as well as 
that!' responded the other, glancing signifi- 
cantly across the room. 

Aim^e meanwhile — altogether unconscious 
of being a subject of discussion — went to the 
chamber which she shared with her cousin, 
and, without striking a light, sat down by the 
open window through which even at night 
the air came with balmy softness. She felt 
strangely puzzled, and strongly averse to the 
service which she had pledged herself to per- 
form ; yet the idea of retreating did not for a 
moment occur to her. She had promised 
Fanny, and she must perform whatever was 
exacted from her in fulfillment of that prom- 
ise. But how much she shrank from this ful- 
fillment it is difficult to say. This impetu- 


20 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


ous lover, whom Fanny herself was afraid to 
face, what would he say, what would he do } 
Would he rage with passion, or be over- 
whelmed by despair ? Aim^e decided that 
she would prefer passion to despair, for she 
had a most tender heart, and the sight of dis- 
tress always unnerved her. She pictured to 
herself the Ariel lying off the bar, with the 
eager lover pacing her deck, sure that happiness 
was within his grasp, fancying no doubt that 
Fanny, like himself, was counting the hours to 
their time of meeting ; and then a picture of 
the scene in the parlor below — of Fanny gay 
and enchanting, of Mr. Meredith fascinated 
and amused — rose before her mental vision. 
“How can she?” the girl thought. “How 
can she ? To bring a man here just to disap- 
point him ! It is — yes, it is shameful !” 

As she so sat and so thought, a clock 
tolled out ten strokes. Soon thereafter the 
different inmates of the house — being chiefly 
of middle age and quiet habits — were to be 
heard exchanging good-night salutations on 
the staircase and in the hall, several doors 
closed, and then Aimee heard her aunt’s foot- 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


21 


steps approach her chamber. There was no 
light, and the girl hoped it would pass on — 
for she had the feeling of a conspirator, and 
dreaded to be addressed by one whom she felt 
as if she was betraying — but Mrs. Berrien 
paused, opened the door and looked in. 

“ Are you asleep, Aim^e } ” she asked. 

“Oh, no. Aunt Alice,” replied Aim^e’s 
voice from the window. “ I am sitting here.” 

“ What ! in the dark, and by an open 
window ! Are you trying to take cold } What 
is the matter?” 

“ Nothing at all,” answered Aim^e, con- 
scious that guilt was in every cadence of her 
voice. “It is so warm that I did not think 
I could take cold, and I — I like to look at 
the stars.” 

“ Close the window at once and go to bed,” 
said Mrs. Berrien. “You need not wait for 
Fanny. She will probably not be up for some 
time. Why are you so foolish and so pecul- 
iar, my dear? It is better for you to stay 
down-stairs in the evening.” 

“ I will hereafter, if you desire it,” replied 
Aim^e, lowering the window as she spoke. 


22 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


She was always docile to the least suggestion, 
but at that moment she would have promised 
obedience in anything, to atone for the de- 
ception she was aiding to practice. 

“ Well, good-night,” said Mrs. Berrien. 
“ Have you matches at hand } ” 

“ Oh, yes,” answered the girl, glad not to 
be obliged to show her face. 

As her aunt went away, she threw herself 
on the outside of her bed, and lay there al- 
most motionless, but wide awake for another 
hour — the delightful hour for which Mr. 
Meredith invariably waited, for in it he had 
the society of his pretty ladylove to him- 
self. Fanny, however, who always sent him 
away punctually on the stroke of eleven, was 
to-night not remiss in doing so. Ten min- 
utes after that hour the door of the cham- 
ber opened, and that young lady appeared, 
bearing a light which flashed full in Aimde’s 
face. 

“ Oh ! ” she cried, “ how you startled me 
with your great, solemn eyes! You foolish 
child, have you not been asleep } I hoped 
when you went away so early you would take 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT, 


23 


a good sleep, and be fresh and ready for my 
little errand.” 

“ I am ready,” answered Aim^e, “ but as for 
having gone ‘to sleep, how could I.? It is all 
too exciting ! ” 

“ One would think it was you who were 
going to elope,” said Fanny, putting down her 
lamp.“ As for me, I am so tired of men, that if 
it were not for mamma I would go into a con- 
vent, where I would never hear of them again. 
You can not fancy how Mr. Meredith has been 
tormenting me, until I have half promised to 
marry him just to get rid of him.” 

“ But you will not get rid of him if you 
marry him,” said Aim^e, with her eyes more 
great and more solemn than ever. 

“ Simpleton ! ” returned Fanny. “ Of course 
not ; but between promising and doing a thing 
there is a very great difference, as poor Len- 
nox will find out to-night. Dear me!” — sit- 
ting down meditatively on the side of Aimee’s 
bed — “ I wonder what made me such a fool 
as to imagine for a moment that I would go 
with him 1 The mere thought makes me 
shudder — to be running off wildly and being 


24 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


seasick (the idea of my forgetting that I 
always am seasick !) instead of going to bed 
comfortably and getting up to-morrow to tor- 
ment Mr. Meredith by flirting with one of 
those handsome Englishmen ! ” 

“O Fanny, are you not ashamed!’^ said 
Aimee. “ To think what Mr. Kyrle must be 
feeling at this moment, while you — ” 

“ Yes, really, I am ashamed ! ” said Fanny, 
hastily. “ It is abominable conduct, I know. 
But you see I am shallow — shallow as that ” — 
indicating about a quarter the depth of her 
little finger — “ and I can’t help it if one nail 
drives out another in my mind. I wonder 
if it is my mind or my heart, by the by? 
Well, anyway, in me. It is not my fault 
that I am shallow; and, on the whole, I 
think I rather like it. One has a much 
easier life. Isn’t it a great deal wiser for 
me to make the best of things as they are, 
for instance, than to be distracted about Len- 
nox Kyrle, who I really like better than any- 
body else in the world, if I let myself think 
of him ? ” 

“ I — I don’t know,” said Aim^e, who found 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


25 


this question too deep for her solving. “ You 
must decide, of course.” 

“I have decided,” said Fanny. “Things 
are best as they are. But now we must have 
done with talking and proceed to action. In 
the first place, I will tell you exactly what 
you must say to Mr. Kyrle when you meet 
him.” 

“ Yes,” answered Aimde, beginning to shiv- 
er at that anticipation. 

“ You are to say,” went on Fanny, “ that I 
feel it is impossible for me to take such a des- 
perate step as to elope with him ; that it 
would break mamma’s heart ; and — and that it 
would ruin his life, for I should only tie him 
down to hopeless poverty. Say that I am 
sorry, and blame myself dreadfully, that my 
feelings will not permit me to see him, and 
that — be sure to make this point emphatic ! — 
he must not dream of attempting to see me. 
My resolution can not be changed. I am 
sure I can trust you to put it all as well as 
possible, Aimde — you have a great deal of 
tact and judgment.” 

“ But why not write it 1 ” demanded Aimde, 


26 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


whose dismay was not soothed by this com- 
pliment. 

“ My dear child, could he read a letter in 
the dark.^^” asked the other, impatiently. 
“ Besides, I never write ; I have learned too 
much of the mischief that lurks in ink. Tell 
him all this as quickly as you can — and be 
sure to make it very positive about his not 
trying to see me — and then run back to the 
house as fast as possible. How lucky it is 
that we live so near the water, else I could not 
let you go ! ” 

It is safe to say that, in this view of the 
case, such lucky proximity was something for 
which Aimee did not feel very grateful as she 
rose to prepare for the expedition. Her cour- 
age was sadly failing, not so much on account 
of the lonely walk through the midnight 
streets, as from the realization of the strange 
and awkward position in which she would be 
placed. She was trembling like a leaf from 
nervousness and excitement as Miss Berrien 
enveloped her in a large, dark cloak, and drew 
the hood over her head. 

“ Now,” said Fanny, glancing at her watch. 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


27 


“ it is time for you to go. I hate — oh, I hate 
dreadfully to send you ! If there were any 
other way — ” 

“ But there is none,” said Aim^e, trying to 
smile. “And I am not afraid.” 

“ It seems so cowardly to send you,” said 
Fanny, half under her breath. “Yet I can not 
trust my own resolution if I met Lennox ! — 
and then if it should be discovered — ” 

Her pause said more than many words. 
At that moment the Meredith diamonds, and 
all that the Meredith diamonds represented, 
shone brightly before her eyes. To risk the 
loss of them by keeping this midnight tryst, 
was more than she could dare. And the girl 
before her looked up with brave, generous 
glance from under the dark hood. 

“ Don’t think of it, Fanny,” she said. “ If 
you were discovered, what would everybody 
say.? while if / am, it does not matter. No- 
body knows or cares about me ! Come, now, 
and let me out. You’ll wait downstairs to let 
me in, will you not?” 

“Yes, indeed, I shall wait and count every 
instant. For Heaven’s sake come back as 


28 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

quickly as you can! And be certain, very 
certain, that it is Lennox Kyrle to whom you 
speak. It would be awful if you gave the 
message to any one but him 1 ' 


III. 

Being a little excited, and not at all 
sleepy, it chanced that Mr. Meredith, after 
parting with Miss Berrien, betook himself to 
the sea wall, where he proceeded to pace to 
and fro, smoking a cigar and wrapped in very 
agreeable thought. Despite her coquetry, 
Fanny had yielded to his suit more than ever 
before, and he felt no doubt that in the end 
she would yield altogether. He liked to be 
played with in this manner. It was not 
enough to discourage — Fanny was too wise 
for that — but just enough to give a zest of un- 
certainty, to sustain and keep alive the interest 
which in similar affairs had more than once 
failed him. In short, he was completely con- 
scious of being in love, and very much pleased 
with the same, finding in it none of the 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


29 


“ pang, the agony, the doubt,” which are poet- 
ically supposed to accompany the tender pas- 
sion, but only an agreeable stimulation. He 
was even conscious of feeling distinctly senti- 
mental, and disposed to cast lingering glances 
at Mrs. Shreve’s house whenever he came to 
the spot where it entered into his range of 
vision. 

On one of these occasions he was surprised 
by a sudden and very unexpected sight — the 
opening of the street door and the emerging 
thence of a figure. For an instant he had a 
startled sensation ; the next he said to himself, 
“ It is only a servant, of course.” But a mo- 
ment later he knew that it was not a servant. 
How he knew it, is difficult to tell; but he 
felt instinctively sure from the walk, the bear- 
ing, and the motions. He stood still, a prey 
to very odd sensations, and watched the ap- 
proach of the figure that had in every line a 
familiar aspect. If it was not Fanny, who 
could it be ? He knew that all the other in- 
mates of the house were elderly people, except 
Aim^e, of whom he did not think at all. 
But to conceive that it could be Fanny, 
3 


30 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


alone and disguised in the streets at midnight, 
was impossible. He said to himself that it 
was impossible, yet his pulses were beating in 
a most unaccountable manner, and there was a 
sound in his ears like the rush of many waters. 
It was natural that at this moment he did not 
pause to ask himsdf whether or not it would 
be honorable to act the part of a spy : he only 
felt that he must know who it was that came 
forth from Mrs. Shreve’s house at midnight, 
with Fanny Berrien's air and movement. 

Meanwhile the shrouded figure walking so 
swiftly, with head bent down, did not see him. 
Poor Aimde's pulses were beating tumultuous- 
ly like his own, and she was thinking of noth- 
ing save her desire to accomplish her errand 
and return to the shelter of the house she had 
left. The night seemed to her invested with 
terror, and the sound of her own light foot- 
steps on the quiet street brought her heart into 
her throat. It is doubtful if she would have 
noticed Mr. Meredith had he stood immedi- 
ately in her path ; she certainly cast no glance 
either to right or left, but hurried forward to 
the place Fanny had designated, intent only 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


31 


upon one object, to deliver her message and 
return. 

As she mounted the sea wall she heard the 
sound of oars, and when she paused, shrink- 
ing and trembling on the steps that led down 
to the water, she saw in the starlight the dark 
outline of a boat containing two or three 
figures. Her heart gave a wild bound and 
then seemed to stand still — for was not this 
the moment of fate ; was not the impetuous 
lover, who would take no denial, before her? 

Certainly one of the figures sprang from 
the boat as she appeared, and reached her side 
with all the impetuosity conceivable in the 
most desperate lover. Before she could speak 
she found her hands in a close clasp, and a 
voice was saying, in a tone of eagerness and 
delight : 

“ So you have come ; you are really here ! 

Even at this moment it struck Aimde that 
there was surprise as well as delight in the 
voice. Evidently Mr. Kyrle had been by no 
means sure that Miss Berrien would appear. 
But the rapture of his greeting made it harder 
for Aimde to explain that she was not the per- 


32 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


son SO eagerly welcomed, and when she tried 
to speak her voice failed. She could only gasp, 
after a moment : 

“ I have come to tell you — ” 

“ Never mind what,” interrupted the young 
man eagerly, with probably a prudent fear of 
what the communication might be. “ You are 
here ; that is enough. There will be time to 
tell me anything and everything when we are 
afloat. Come, here is the boat.” 

He drew her toward him, and so compel- 
ling was his grasp that Aim^e felt that in an- 
other moment she might be in the boat and 
en route for the West Indies. This gave her 
the courage of desperation. She made a de- 
termined effort to release herself as she said 
more clearly : 

“ You are mistaken. I am not the person 
you think. I have only come to tell you that 
she can not come.” 

“Not the person I think!” repeated the 
young man. He released her hands and fell 
back a step in his amazement. The violent 
revulsion of feeling which he underwent was 
evident in his voice, and the sharpness of his 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


33 


disappointment so pierced Aim^e’s heart that 
she forgave the sharpness of his tone, as he 
went on : 

“ Then who are you — and why are you 
here.?’^ 

“ I am Fanny's cousin,” the girl replied, 
then suddenly checked herself “ But you — 
who are you ? ” she said. “ I was told to ask 
your name before I gave any message.” 

“ There is no doubt who I am,” he replied, 
sternly. “ My name is Lennox Kyrle. What 
message have you for me ? ” 

“ Only that — that Fanny can not come,” 
answered Aim^e, tremulously. She paused and 
clasped her hands nervously together, trying 
to recall all that Fanny had impressed on her 
mind to be delivered, but only the principal 
points remained, and before she could gather 
them into shape, as it were, Mr. Kyrle justified 
his. character for impetuosity by breaking in : 

“That she can not come,” he repeated. 
“Is that all, after having brought me here? 
Why can not she come ? ” 

The indignant emphasis of the last ques- 
tion was, under the circumstances, natural 


34 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


enough ; and, confronted with it, Aimee felt 
in every fiber the shame of the answer which 
she was bound to give : 

“ Because she — has changed her mind,” she 
said desperately, grasping the main fact and 
forgetting all the fluent words with which 
Fanny had clothed it. “ She bade me tell you 
that she is very sorry, but that she can not 
elope with you and break her mother’s heart.” 

Her consideration for her mother is most 
admirable,” said the young man with grim sar- 
casm. “It is only a pity that it did not in- 
fluence her a little sooner. And so she is 
* sorry ’ that she can not elope ! She could say 
no more for the calamity of missing a ball.” 

“ Fanny has not very deep feelings,” said 
Aim^e, in a voice of as sincere compunction 
as if the feelings in question had been her 
own, “ but I think she is sorry.” 

This simple statement, made in that sweet, 
pathetic voice, said a great deal more than the 
speaker intended to Lennox Kyrle. He was 
silent for an instant, then spoke in a softer 
tone : 

“ I know that she is easily influenced by 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


35 


those around her,” he said, “ and so this might 
have been anticipated. But if I were to see 
her—” 

“ Oh, that is impossible ! ” interrupted 
Aim^e, hastily. “ She charged me to tell you 
above all things not to attempt to see her.” 

“ Ah ! ” said the young man. Keen disap- 
pointment and mortification were in his tone, 
but also something of comprehension. “ Then 
there is another lover,” he said. 

Aim^e did not reply. It was no. part of 
the message with which she was charged to 
enlighten Mr.^ Kyrle with , regard to the other 
string to Miss' Berrien’s bow; and since his 
assertion was fortunately an assertion, not a 
question, she suffered it to pass unanswered, 
forgetting that silence, in this case as in many 
others, was equivalent to assent. 

“That accounts for everything,” said the 
young man after a pause — in which, perhaps, 
he had waited for contradiction — “ and I only 
regret that I should have given Miss Berrien 
the pain which I am sure she must feel acutely 
of treating me in this way. But it may re- 
lieve her sorrow, perhaps, to know that it is 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


36 

the last opportunity she will ever have to in- 
flict a pang upon me. I have been the slave 
of her caprice and my own folly long enough. 
As I came here I resolved that this should 
be the decisive test. If she cared for me, she 
would go with me ; if not, it was well to know 
the truth and be no longer the plaything of a 
coquette. Well, I am here, and she refuses 
even to see me. She breaks her word and 
throws rhe over without compunction. It is 
the end. Tell her that from me.” 

It flashed across Aim^e’s mind, as he 
spoke, that this was very much the ultimatum 
which she had prophesied, but she had not 
been prepared for the stern resolution of the 
voice which uttered it. Plainly, Mr. Lennox 
Kyrle meant all that he said, and Miss Ber- 
rien’s comfortable belief that he would remain 
her slave as much as ever was a delusion of 
her own vanity. 

“ I will tell her,” the girl answered, in a 
subdued tone. “ I wish I had been able to — 
to give you her message better. She said a 
great deal — ” 

“Which I can easily imagine,” interposed 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


37 


Mr. Kyrle. “It is not necessary that you 
should make an effort to remember it.” 

Thus discouraged, Aim^e felt that she need 
no longer remain, that she had done all that 
was required of her, and might now return 
with speed to the shelter of the roof for which 
she longed. 

“ I must go now,” she said, yet still she 
hesitated. She longed to say a word of sym- 
pathy, but it was not easy to do so. At 
length, however, she summoned courage, and 
spoke quickly : 

“ I am sorry, very sorry for you,” she said. 
“ It is dreadful to trust and — be deceived. I 
would not have come on such an errand, only 
it was necessary you should know, and Fanny 
could not come.” 

It is not too much to say that these words 
brought her personal individuality for the first 
time to the attention of the man before her. 
Up to this time he had not given a thought 
to the consideration of who or what she was. 
To him she was simply the mouthpiece of and 
means of communication with Fanny Berrien. 
Now it suddenly occurred to him that here 


38 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

was a young, shrinking girl, who had come 
alone at midnight to bring him the message 
of the woman who had failed him. 

“ She could not come, but she could send 
youl' he said, suddenly rousing to something 
like indignation, “ though I hear from your 
voice that you are young, and this is no fit- 
ting time or place for you. Do not let me 
detain you longer — or, rather, let me take you 
at once back to your home.” 

“ Oh, no, no ! ” cried Aim^e, mindful of 
Fanny’s promise to watch and wait for her, 
and fearing an encounter of the two at Mrs. 
Shreve’s respectable door. “You must not 
think of it. I have only a short way to go, 
and the streets are quiet.” 

“ Do you think I will force my way in to 
her ? ” said the young man, scornfully. “ I 
assure you that I have not the least desire to 
do so. What have I to say to her? Nothing, 
except that I shall never trouble her again, 
and that I can trust you to say for me.” 

“I shall say it,” Aim^e answered, feeling 
not altogether disinclined to do so, “but I 
beg you not to come with me. I shall be at 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


39 


home in a minute. Indeed, you must not 
come.” 

“ I will not insist, then,” he said, hearing 
in her tone how greatly she was disturbed. 
“ But you must go at once. This is a service 
that only selfishness would have asked of you.” 

“ I came willingly,” said the girl. It 
might have compromised Fanny, but I am of 
no importance — it can not harm me, I am 
only sorry that I had to bring you such a pain- 
ful disappointment.” 

“ If a man is a fool, he must suffer, and de- 
serves to suffer,” said Mr. Kyrle, with a decis- 
ion that did credit to his common sense. “ But 
you are as kind as you are brave, and I shall 
not forget you. Now, go.” 

Aimde needed no second bidding. She 
turned and hastened back in the direction of 
Mrs. Shreve’s house and Mr. Meredith, who 
had watched the meeting and conversation 
from afar, divided the while between an over- 
whelming desire to break in upon it and the 
salutary fear of making himself ridiculous, had 
the satisfaction of seeing the door open and 
close upon her. 


40 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


IV. 

“ Oh, what a time you have been, Aim^e ! ” 
cried Miss Berrien as she opened the door. “ I 
have been in an agony ! What kept you so 
long ? ” 

“Have I been long?” said Aimde. She 
was almost breathless, and as she sank down 
on the first seat at hand, pale and trembling 
now that the need for exertion was past, 
Fanny’s heart smote her for her words of re- 
proach. 

“ Of course it has seemed long to me,” she 
said, “ but I do not suppose it really has been 
long; and what does it matter about me in 
comparison to you — you poor, brave child ! 
What a selfish wretch I was to send you ! 
You look perfectly overcome, and I have not 
even a glass of wine to give you.” 

“ I dont want any wine,” said Aim^e. 
“ After a while — when my heart stops beating 
so dreadfully — I will tell you— all about it.” 

“Yes,” said Fanny, eagerly, “but at least 
you can tell me this now — did you see him ? ” 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


41 


Aim^e nodded, being for the moment past 
speech ; and Miss Berrien at once locked the 
door, as if she feared Mr. Kyrle might be on 
the other side. Then she watched Aim^e 
anxiously, and when the latter presently 
opened her lips as if to speak, interposed with 
a warning whisper : 

“ No, no — not here. We must go upstairs. 
Are you able to walk ? ” 

“Oh, yes — why not?” answered Aim^e. 
“ I was out of breath when I came in ; that 
was all.” 

“ Y ou looked as if you were about to 
faint,” said Fanny, taking up her lamp. “ How 
thankful I am that it is over, and that you are 
safely back ! ” 

Aimde might have assured the speaker 
that her thankfulness on this point was trifling 
compared to her own, but the action of her 
heart not being yet sufficiently regulated to 
make speech easy, she silently followed Miss 
Berrien's stealthy footsteps upstairs. 

Once safely in their own room, Fanny was 
full of eager questioning. 

“You saw him!” she exclaimed. “Did 


42 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


you give him my message ? How did he take 
it ? What did he say ? ” 

“Yes, I saw him,” replied Aimde. “He 
was waiting, and at first could scarcely believe 
that it was not you — ” 

“ Poor fellow ! ” cried Fanny, in feeling 
parenthesis. 

“ But when he understood that it was not 
you, and that you meant to throw him over,” 
proceeded Aim^e, not without a sense of pleas- 
ure in the recital, “ he was very indignant, and 
he told me to tell you that you would never 
have another opportunity to treat him in such 
a manner, and that he came here meaning this 
to be the decisive test : that if you cared for 
him you would come with him, and that if you 
did not come he would never ask you again. 
It was to-night or never.” 

“ ‘ To-night or never ! ^ ” repeated Miss 
Berrien. For a moment she was too much 
amazed to say anything more. Then her cus- 
tomary easy philosophy reasserted itself. “He 
must have been awfully angry,” she observed, 
“ and when a man is angry he will say any- 
thing. But for his sake I am rather glad that 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


43 


he takes it in this way ; he will not feel the 
disappointment so much. I was afraid that 
he would be desperate, and insist on seeing 
me. It is a great deal better that he should 
be furious, and talk about ‘ to-night or never ' 
- — which, of course, is all nonsense. It may be 
never, indeed ” — with a slight sigh — “ but, if so, 
it will not be his fault.” 

“ You would not think so if you had heard 
him,” said Aimde. “ Whether you marry Mr. 
Meredith or not, I am sure that Mr. Kyrle 
will never ask you to marry him again.” 

“You do not know Mr. Kyrle as well as 
I do, my dear,” said Fanny, complacently. 
“He will be quite certain to ask me when- 
ever he has a chance. I only hope he may 
not have a chance soon. I hope you told 
him that he must go away at once ? ” 

“No,” answered Aimde, “I did not tell 
him anything of the kind. In the first place, 
you never told me to do so, and, in the sec- 
ond place, I would not if you had. It was 
bad enough to bring him here only to disap- 
point him. You have no right to order him 
to go away.” 


44 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


“Upon my word, you seem to espouse 
Mr. Kyrle’s cause very warmly!” said Fanny. 
“ Right or no right, I wish I had sent him 
word to go away at once. It would be ter- 
rible if he stopped here and met Mr. Mere- 
dith.” 

“It would not surprise him,” said Aim^e. 
“As soon as I told him that you said he must 
not attempt to see you, he exclaimed, ‘ Then 
there is another lover 1 ’ ” 

“ Did he } ” said Fanny, with a laugh. 
“ How like him 1 He always had that kind 
of penetration. One might try to deceive him, 
but he would go straight to the root of the 
matter. But then, of course, jealousy helped 
him in this case. He knows me well enough 
to be sure that, if I had not somebody else, 
I would not want him to go away.” 

“ So it is not ktm — it is just somebody — 
that you want,” said Aim^e, indignantly. 

“Not exactly,” replied Fanny. “But you 
are a child — ^you don’t understand.” 

“ I should be sorry to think that I would 
ever understand such heartlessness,” said 
Aimde. 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


45 


“ Y our sympathies must have been greatly 
"wrought upon by Lennox,” said Miss Berrien, 
composedly. “It is not surprising; I know 
how he can influence one. Ah, I shall never 
have such another lover! You may think me 
heartless, and, luckily for myself, I am not 
very much troubled with my heart, but if I 
chose to let myself go, I could be as desper- 
ate about Lennox Kyrle as— as he is about 
me. If his rich uncle would only die and 
leave him a fortune — But there is no hope 
of that.” 

“If he has a rich uncle, why is there no 
hope of his dying and leaving a fortune?” 
asked Aim^e. 

“ Oh, he will die some day — no fear about 
that"' said Fanny, vindictively, “and he will 
leave a fortune of a million or two. But 
poor Lennox will not get it. That is all 
hopelessly settled. The old wretch has made 
his will in the most elaborate form, and left 
his money to found some kind of an institute 
that is to bear his name and have his statue. 
It is all a miserable piece of vanity and self- 
glorification ; but he will be called a ‘public 

4 


46 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

benefactor/ and all that stuff, after ruining 
Lennox’s life — and mine.” 

“ I don’t think he will ruin yours,” said 
Aim^e; “but poor Mr. Kyrle, what will he 
do? ” 

Fanny shook her head in a way to inti- 
mate that this gentleman’s prospects were 
dark indeed. 

“He might have done very well,” she said, 
“ but then, you see, he is impracticable, and 
that is what would make it such madness to 
marry him. His uncle told him frankly that 
he had not the faintest intention of leaving 
him a fortune, but that he would giv^ him an 
opportunity to make one for himself. ‘ I’ll 
give you a better start in life than I had,’ he 
said, ‘ and if you don’t take advantage of it, 
that will be your fault’ So he offered him a 
place in his business house, which, of course, 
meant the entire control and reversion of the 
business ; and would you believe that Lennox 
declined the offer ? ” 

“Why?” inquired Aim^e, wisely refraining 
from any expression of opinion. 

“ Because he has no liking for commercial 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


47 


life — as if that had anything to do with it I 
He tried it for a while, then gave it up, say- 
ing he could not waste the best years of his 
life in work that he disliked. So he has gone 
into literature, and is connected with a news- 
paper. Conceive the difference ! And fancy 
me dragging through life as the wife of a 
‘ special correspondent ’ ! ’’ 

“But he may be a famous author some 
day,” said Aim^e, with brightening eyes. 

“ He may — and again he may not,” re- 
sponded Fanny, dryly. “ And even if he were 
a famous author, it does not follow that he 
would be anything save a poor man. Now, 
I was not made to be the wife of a poor man ; 
any one can see that.” 

“ I — suppose not,” said Aim^e, slowly. 
These were mercenary ideas to be introduced 
into the world of her young dreams of ro- 
mance; but she took them in as she had al- 
ready taken in the facts of faithlessness and 
heartlessness, and no doubt assimilated them, 
by some mental process, to such knowledge of 
human nature and human life as she already 
possessed. 


48 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

“ But now I think we have talked enough,” 
said Fanny. “If you are not ready to go to 
sleep, I am. I feel so light and comfortable 
to think that I have safely disposed of the 
Lennox difficulty ! It has been a dreadful 
weight on my mind ever since I received his 
letter saying that he was coming. I was at 
my wits’ end. I did not know what to do 
until I thought of taking you into my confi- 
dence. You have been a perfect jewel, Ai- 
m^e. I shall never forget the service you 
have done me, and if ever I have a chance to 
repay it in kind, I will.” 

Aim^e laughed. She had not a keen sense 
of humor, but it occurred to her that Fanny 
was about as likely to do for another what had 
been done for her this night, as she — Aim^e — 
was likely to elope. 

“ I am sure that you will never be called 
upon to repay it in kind,” she said. “ I can not 
imagine myself promising to elope ; but if I 
did promise, / would go / ” 

“ I dare say,” replied Fanny. “ You are ro- 
mantic, and you would enjoy — or you think 
you would enjoy — dangers and difficul- 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


49 

ties. But as for me, I like the comforts of 
life.’^ 

Ten minutes later Aim^e was listening to 
the soft, regular breathing which told how the 
speaker was enjoying one of the comforts of 
life. It was incomprehensible to the girl who 
was still tingling with excitement from head 
to foot, and felt as if sleep would never visit 
her eyelids ; but her thoughts did not long 
dwell on Fanny. They went back to the 
lover, for whom her tender heart ached as she 
pictured him returning alone to the yacht 
which waited the coming bride in order to 
spread its wings for the South. What a cruel 
thing it was to let him come — only to disap- 
point him ! Indignation and pity were min- 
gled in her mind; and as hour after hour of the 
silent night passed, she still lay wide awake, 
her great, solemn eyes, as Fanny called them, 
fixed on darkness, but her fancy seeing plainly 
the starlit deck of the Ariel, where a figure 
paced alone. 


50 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


V. 

Toward daylight, weariness overcame even 
excited imagination, and Aim^e fell asleep. 
When she awoke it was from a dream in 
which she fancied herself on board the Ariel, 
and that Fanny had come to take her away. 

Aimde, Aim^e ! ” said the familiar voice ; and 
when she woke, it was to find Fanny’s voice 
indeed sounding in her ears, and Fanny’s eyes 
anxiously gazing at her. 

“ What is the matter ? ” she cried, rousing 
herself at once. “ Have I slept very late? Is 
breakfast ready ? ” 

“Breakfast is over long ago,” Fanny an- 
swered. “ I would not disturb you, for I 
thought you had certainly earned the right to 
sleep as late as you pleased ; and fortunately 
mamma never comes down to breakfast, you 
know. But I have come to rouse you now, 
because something dreadful has happened. 
O Aim^e, what do you think ? — Mr. Mere- 
dith saw you last night ! ” 

“Mr. Meredith!” cried Aim^e. She sat 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


51 


up in bed, a picture of consternation. “ It is 
impossible ! ” she gasped. “ I saw no one. He 
could not have seen me.” 

“ There is no doubt about it,” said Fanny. 
“He certainly saw you — saw you talking to 
Lennox, and he thought it was mer 

“ You.?” 

“Yes. And I could not make him be- 
lieve otherwise except by telling him that it 
was you. Even then he seemed to doubt ; so 
I said I would bring you to tell him yourself. 
O Aimee, it is mean beyond words to ask 
such a thing of you ; and yet there will be no 
good in what you did last night, if you refuse 
to do this ! ” 

“ But — I do not understand,” said Aim^e. 
“ How will it make any difference .? I went 
for you!' 

“ But he does not know that,” said Fanny. 
“ He thinks — oh, my dear, you must forgive 
me ! — that you went for yourself.” 

“You told him so?” said Aim^e, in a 
voice that did not sound like her own. 

“ How could I help it?” answered Fanny. 
“ He had been nursing his anger and jealousy 


52 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


all night, and when he came this morning I 
hardly knew him. He was ready to leave me 
at a word, and I should never have seen him 
again. So what could I do but tell him that 
the person he saw was you ? ” 

“You could have told him the truth,” said 
Aim^e. “ I am sure he ought to have been sat- 
isfied to hear that you sent Mr. Kyrle away.” 

Fanny shook her head. “ You don’t know 
men,” she said. “ And I did not know Mr. 
Meredith before this morning. He was so 
angry, that I saw at once he would never for- 
give me if he knew the truth ; so there was 
nothing to do but deny the whole thing. I 
suppose it was cowardly ; but I am a coward. 
There is no doubt of that.” 

Aimee agreed that there could be no doubt 
of it; but the frankly admitted fact did not 
make her own position better. As far as she 
could understand, Fanny had boldly trans- 
ferred the whole matter — intended elopement, 
broken promise, midnight tryst — to her shoul- 
ders, and asked her to acknowledge it. She 
could hardly realize all that was demanded 
of her. 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


53 


Do you mean to say/’ she asked, “ that 
you told Mr. Meredith that I had promised to 
go away with Mr. Kyrle 1 ” 

“ What else could I tell him ? ” replied Fan- 
ny, desperately. “O Aim^e, don’t you see: 
what is the good of what was done last night, 
if I acknowledge it this morning? I should 
lose Mr. Meredith just as much as if I had 
gone with Lennox. So I thought I might 
trust you. I thought you would help me. It 
is only to say it was you last night ; the rest 
will be understood.” 

“ The rest — that is, the falsehood ! ” cried 
Aimde, indignantly. “ O Fanny, how can you 
ask it — how can you ? I did not mind what 
I did last night, though it was hard enough. 
I would do that, or anything else of the kind, 
over again. But this I can not, I will not, 
do ! ” 

“Then,” said Fanny, sitting down with a 
gesture of despair, “there is simply no hope, 
and I wish I had gone with Lennox. It is 
useless for me to face Mr. Meredith again. 
If I told him that you refused to come, he 
would never believe that it was not me last 


54 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


night. Well,” with a long-drawn sigh, “ I sup- 
pose it serves me right. But I am sorry for 
poor mamma.” 

Sobs followed, while Aimde sat staring at 
the wall before her. Fanny's grief did not 
touch her as much as it should have done, 
perhaps, for she understood exactly the degree 
and quality of the regard which that young 
lady entertained for Mr. Meredith, and she did 
not yet realize that disappointment over the 
loss of possible diamonds might be as acute 
as that over the loss of a lover. But the allu- 
sion to Mrs. Berrien had more effect. Aim^e 
knew that her aunt's heart was set upon Fan- 
ny's marrying Mr. Meredith, and for her aunt 
Aim^e felt that she was bound to do much — 
for was she not the only person in the world 
who had ever given a thought to her sad 
girlhood, or attempted to throw a little sun- 
shine upon it ? There was not much in 
common between Mrs. Berrien and her niece ; 
but on the side of the latter there was a 
deep sense of gratitude. “ Should I hesitate 
to do anything for Aunt Alice, who has 
done so much for me?” she asked herself. 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


55 


It was this she was thinking while Fanny 
sobbed. 

Presently she said abruptly, “ Is Mr. Mere- 
dith downstairs yet ? ” 

“ I don’t know,” replied Miss Berrien. “ I 
told him to wait for me, but he may have 
gone. I hope he has. I can never face him 
again.” 

“ I am sure,” said Aim^e, tremulously, “ if 
you would only make up your mind to tell 
him the truth — ” 

Fanny interrupted her by a petulant mo- 
tion. “ Pray talk of something that you un- 
derstand,” she said. “ If you will not help me, 
of course I can not force you to do so, but 
allow me to be the best judge of my own con- 
duct.” 

Poor Aimde ! Her own eyes filled with 
tears — tears far more genuine than Fanny’s. 
How, after all, could she refuse this service 
which was asked of her } It was hard, infi- 
nitely harder than the one of the night before, 
but it seemed to her that she was bound to do 
it — to immolate herself and the truthfulness 
which was one of the strongest instincts of 


56 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

her nature — in order that her aunt’s desire 
might be accomplished. With an effort she 
said, at length : 

“ And if I were to do what you ask — if I 
told Mr. Meredith that it was I last night — 
should I have to tell him anything else ? ” 

“ No, no,” cried Fanny, with eyes sparkling 
through her tears. “That is all. Leave the 
rest to me. I don’t ask you to say a thing 
which is untrue.” 

“ It is all the same if I let it be under- 
stood,” said Aimde, dejectedly. “ But I sup- 
pose I must do it — if Mr. Meredith has not 
gone.” 

“ Oh, I don’t think he has gone,” said Fan- 
ny, forgetting her contrary statement of a mo- 
ment back. “ I told him that you had not 
risen this morning because you were awake 
nearly all night. So, if you will dress quickly, 
he will not think we have been long.” 

Thus animated, Aim^e rose, dressed as 
quickly as her trembling hands would permit, 
and followed Fanny — who dried her tears with 
wonderful celerity — down-stairs. When they 
reached the parlor door Miss Berrien took her 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


57 


companion’s hand in an encouraging pressure. 
“ Don’t be afraid,” she whispered. “ I will not 
let him annoy you.” 

At a more auspicious moment Aimde 
might have resented this offer of protection 
from the person who was dragging her into 
the lion’s jaws ; but she had no opportunity to 
do so, for the next instant they were in Mr. 
Meredith’s presence. 

It had never occurred to Aim^e before 
that this was at all an awe-inspiring presence ; 
but now she felt herself trembling from head 
to foot before the rotund, genial gentleman, 
who looked unusually pale and grave, and 
whom she was going to aid in deceiving. It 
was this last consideration which made a 
coward of her, and fastened her eyes to the 
floor as she entered the room. 

“ Here is my cousin, Mr. Meredith,” said 
Fanny, whose conscience did not apparently 
make a coward of her. “ She has kindly come 
to satisfy you as to who it was that you saw 
leave this house, go to the sea wall, and re- 
turn last night.” 

Aim^e lifted her glance and looked at Mr. 


58 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENi". 

Meredith then — who, in turn, looked at her. 
More than ever her eyes were at this moment 
the eyes of a startled fawn, and as they gazed 
at him full of wistful appeal and fright and 
pain, he said to himself that with such eyes de- 
ception was not possible. He had thought 
only of Fanny before, but now he felt a sud- 
den thrill of pity and compunction for this 
girl whom his suspicions had placed in such a 
position. 

“ I am very sorry,” he stammered. “ I had 
no desire to interfere in anything which did 
not concern me ; but I thought — I believed — 
It was you, then, whom I saw last night?” 

“Yes, it was I,” answered Aim^e. She 
spoke with a clear distinctness for which 
Fanny blessed her, and met his steady gaze 
unflinchingly. As long as it was the truth — 
so she said to herself — she did not mind. 

Mr. Meredith, on his part, was staggered 
by her self-possession. Shrinking as she 
looked, there was no faltering in her speech, 
no shame in her manner. From her calm and 
ready answer, it might have been the most 
natural thing in the world for a young girl to 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


59 

leave her home at midnight to hold a tiyst on 
the sea wall. 

“ I beg your pardon,” said the amazed man, 
who began to think that a girl capable of this 
coolness was capable of anything else — al- 
though up to this time he had looked upon 
her as an insignificant child, fit rather for dolls 
than love affairs — “ but it was so strange to 
see a lady go out at such a time that — one 
could not help drawing certain conclusions. 
And the thought of you never occurred to me, 
for I should have said you were much too 
young for anything of the kind. And — by 
Jove! you are too young!” he added, with 
honest warmth. “Your aunt should be in- 
formed. — It is not right,” addressing Fanny, 
“ that such an affair should be allowed to go 
on. 

“ I thought I told you that it was at an 
end,” said that young lady, coolly. “Aimde 
sent Mr. Kyrle away; and I promised her 
that if she came down to satisfy your doubt, 
she should not be annoyed further.” 

“ I have no desire to annoy her,” said Mr. 
Meredith, “ but she is so young that really — 


6o A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

This Mr. Kyrle can not be a man of honor, to 
try to make such a child elope!’' 

“ Aim^e looks more of a child than she is,” 
said Fanny, hurriedly; “and — and I have told 
you that it is all over. Mr. Kyrle is gone. — 
And now, Aim^e, that you have satisfied Mr. 
Meredith, I think you may be allowed to go 
also.” 

Perhaps it was something in her tone 
which roused renewed suspicion in Mr. Mere- 
dith’s breast. He looked from one to the 
other ; his brow lowered, and he said, stiffly : 

“ If you have no objection, I should like to 
ask Miss” — he found he did not know her 
name — “ Miss Aimde a question or two.” 

“ Y ou have no right to question her about 
her own affairs,” said Fanny, who feared what 
Aim^e might reply to those questions. “ I 
promised that she should not be annoyed. — 
Come, Aimee!” 

But Aim^e read rightly the lowering 
cloud on the suitor’s brow and held her 
ground, resisting Fanny’s attempt to draw her 
away, and looking up with her clear glance 
into the suspicious eyes bent on her. 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


6l 


“You think, perhaps,” she said, meeting 
his suspicions boldly, “that I am saying this 
to shield Fanny ; that it was not I who 
met Mr. Kyrle last night. But you are mis- 
taken. It was 1. I will swear it, if you 
like.” 

“ There is no need of that,” said Mr. Mere- 
dith, still somewhat suspicious, but again dis- 
armed by those candid eyes. “ I should be 
satisfied by your word. Only, it is strange — ” 

He paused — for at that moment the door 
opened, and a servant appeared, saying : 

“If you please. Miss Berrien, Mr. Kyrle 
asks to see you.” 


VI. 

Fanny’s courage was of good metal that it 
did not fail altogether at this juncture. She 
felt for a moment as if it must, and if Mr. 
Kyrle had followed the servant into the room 
it is certain that she would have thrown up. 
her game in despair. Thought is so quick that 
even in the midst of her consternation there 
5 


62 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


was a flash of keen regret that she had not 
followed Aim6e’s advice and told Mr. Mere- 
dith the truth ; but it was too late for candor 
now. What would have been graceful confi- 
dence an hour before, would now seem only 
the desperate resource of exposure. She 
looked at the door, fully expecting to see 
Lennox’s face ; but when she understood that 
he would not enter without permission, her 
courage rose to the difficulty and her ready wit 
perceived a way of escape. 

“ It is you whom he wishes to see, Aim6e,” 
she said, addressing that terror-stricken young 
person. “ Go to him at once, and take him 
into Mrs. Shreve’s sitting-room. You can 
speak to him there quietly. But pray make 
him go away as soon as possible. Remember, 
mamma may be down any moment.” 

She fairly pushed Aim6e from the room 
before the girl could utter a word or collect 
her thoughts, and then turned with great self- 
possession to Mr. Meredith. 

“ He is an impetuous young man, who will 
not take ‘No’ when it has been said to him,” 
she observed, “ so it is best that Aim6e should 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


63 

say it over again herself. He thinks, no doubt, 
that I am influencing her.” 

“ You should influence her,” said Mr. Mere- 
dith. “ You should see that there is an end to 
such folly at once.” 

“ I have influenced her,” said Fanny, very 
truthfully. “ But for me, she would not have 
sent him away last night. And so you were 
positive that it was me whom you saw ! ” she 
went on, with absolutely mirthful eyes. “ It is 
true, Aim^e is as tall as I am ; but then she is 
so slight, and so unformed — ” 

“How could I tell that at night?” said 
Mr. Meredith. “And how could I think of 
her ? She always seemed to me a mere child. 
I confess that I thought only of you — and a 
most miserable night I spent in consequence,” 
he added, feelingly. 

“ I am not at all sorry,” said Miss Berrien, 
with uncompromising decision. “ You had no 
right to think such a thing for a moment, after 
all that I have said to you. It was shameful ! 
It shows that you have no trust in me — no 
real regard and respect for me. If I did what 
was right, now that I have proved how you 


64 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

misjudged me, I should never speak to you 
again ! ” 

“ Oh, you would not be so cruel as that, I 
hope!” said the now humbled and alarmed 
suitor. “ Because, after all, I was hardly to 
blame — I forgot all about your cousin’s exist- 
ence ; and you know you have never promised 
anything, so I had no right to feel certain of 
you.” 

“You will never have the right if you can 
not trust me better than this,” said Fanny, per- 
ceiving her advantage and pressing it ruthlessly. 

It was not difficult to foresee the state of 
subjection to which Mr. Meredith would soon 
be reduced in order to make amends for the 
mistake into which he had been betrayed. 
Miss Berrien was determined upon two things : 
first, to keep him well engaged until she was 
sure that Lennox Kyrle had left the house, 
and, secondly, to revenge herself for the fright 
she had suffered ; but despite her self-com- 
mand, her nerves were in a state of consider- 
able tension, and it is to be feared that it was 
rather a bad quarter of an hour which he was 
called upon to endure. 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


65 

Not so bad, however, as that of poor 
Aim^e, who was sent forth to again encounter 
and overcome the ill-used Mr. Kyrle. She 
found him standing at the hall door — a slender, 
handsome young man, whose refined face and 
brilliant, eager eyes presented a type as widely 
different from Mr. Meredith as it is possible to 
conceive. He turned quickly at the sound of 
her footstep, and Aim^e felt as if the glance 
which fell on her pierced to her trembling 
soul. But there was nothing which she de- 
sired or had need. to conceal, so she came for- 
ward, the movement of her slight, shrinking 
figure reminding him of the night before, and 
her dark eyes full of an unconscious appeal. 

“ I am sent,” she said, in a low, hesitating 
voice, to tell you — ” And then she paused. 
What had she been sent to tell him ? 

“ To tell me that Miss Berrien is engaged 
and declines to see me, I presume,” said Mr. 
Kyrle, quietly, coming to her assistance. “ I 
anticipated some such message. But may I 
ask why Miss Berrien has developed this sud- 
den fear of meeting me ? She certainly can 
not think that I will proceed to extremities 


66 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


and carry her off by force. It is possible that 
she might have feared something of the kind 
last night, but now — ” 

“ Oh, pray don’t say such things here ! ” in- 
terrupted Aimde, finding her tongue in sheer 
dismay, as she glanced in apprehension from 
the staircase, down which her aunt might de- 
scend at any moment, to the parlor door out 
of which Mr. Meredith might issue. “ Fanny 
told me to take you into this room, where 
we can speak quietly,” she went on quickly. 
“Will you come for a moment?” 

She opened, as she spoke, a door which 
led into a small sitting-room. It was Mrs. 
Shreve’s private domain, but Fanny (who was 
her prime favorite) had obtained permission 
to use it in emergencies like the present, and 
when directing Aim6e to go there she knew 
that Mrs. Shreve was at this time out of the 
house. 

Mr. Kyrle hesitated an instant, then fol- 
lowed Aimde into the room, and when she 
had closed the door looked at her a little 
curiously. 

“ Why do you let your cousin put such a 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


67 


duty as this upon you?” he asked, abruptly. 
“Why do you not decline to aid her selfish- 
ness and duplicity ? Then she would be forced 
to come and face the truth herself.” 

“ I do not think it would do her any 
good,” replied Aimee, simply, “ and I am sure 
it would not do you any at all. I have come 
because she asked me — that is all. I do not 
approve of the way she is acting” — with a 
grave shake of the head — “ but I could not re- 
fuse to help her, for she is in a difficulty.” 

I can very well imagine what it is,” said 
Mr. Kyrle, grimly, “and I assure you that I 
have no desire to add to the embarrassment 
of her position. I am simply here to end in 
a definite manner what I have been foolish 
enough to regard as a tie between us. I be- 
lieve I told you last night that I would make 
no effort to see her, and had I followed my 
inclination I should have adhered to that re- 
solve. But a little reflection showed me that 
to leave our relations as she desired them to 
be left was impossible on my part. It is 
necessary ” — he spoke with emphasis, drawing 
together his straight, black brows in an un- 


68 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

conscious frown — “ that she shall clearly under- 
stand that by her own act she has ended all 
between us. I have a right to demand that 
she will see me in order to hear this.” 

“ Of course you have a right,” agreed 
Aimee, thinking the while how different this 
was to the pleadings Fanny had anticipated ; 
“ but just now it is impossible for her to see 
you, so the best thing you can do is to go 
away. I promise you that I will tell Fanny 
whatever you wish.” 

“ I have no doubt of that,” he said. “ Any 
one who would undertake for another what 
you have already undertaken in this matter 
can be trusted, I am sure, to make a truthful 
report. But there are some things which 
should be said face to face ; so I must beg 
you again to request Miss Berrien to see me. 
I will not detain her more than a few min- 
utes.” 

“ But — ” said Aim^e, and then she paused, 
asking herself what she could possibly urge 
that would be likely to% influence this very 
determined young man, and save Fanny from 
the Nemesis that seemed about to overtake 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


69 

her. The absolute self-forgetfulness of her 
wistful gaze, as she stood with her hands 
clasped tightly together, struck Kyrle in the 
midst of his own preoccupation ; but before 
he could speak she went on hurriedly : “ If it 
were possible, Fanny would see you, I am 
sure. But she is placed in a very trying po- 
sition just now, and she can not help herself — 
she can not see you. If you would only be- 
lieve this and go away, perhaps some other 
time—” 

“ I believe it because you say it,” answered 
Kyrle, moved by a sudden impulse of com- 
passion for the distress on her face, “ and for 
your sake I will go. But there will be no 
other time, so far as any attempt of mine to 
see Miss Berrien is concerned. Her refusal 
to receive me, coming after her conduct of 
last night, makes it impossible that I shall 
ever again approach her. May I ask you to 
be my embassador, as you have been hers, and 
tell her that I disregarded her wishes and at- 
tempted to see he^*, not because I desired in 
the least to change her resolution, but because 
I wished to bring matters between us to a 


70 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


positive and definite conclusion. I did not 
want to leave any loophole for misunderstand- 
ing. Be kind enough to make this clear.” 

“ I will,” said Aim^e, in feverish haste to be 
rid of him. “ I promise you that I will make 
it perfectly clear. And shall I tell her that 
you are going away at once } ” 

“ At once,” he replied, with decision. “ She 
need fear no further annoyance of any kind 
from me ; and you need not fear being sent 
again on such an errand as that of last night. 
At least there is no possibility of your being 
sent to me, and I strongly advise you to de- 
cline to serve Miss Berrien in that manner 
again.” 

“ She is not likely to ask me to serve her 
in that manner again,” said Aim^e. “ But 
though it was not pleasant, I would rather do 
that than — some other things,” she added, with 
a keen recollection of the service she had 
lately been called upon to render. 

“ It was simply unpardonable to have sent 
you on such an errand,” said the young man, 
his indignation growing with his interest in 
the childlike creature. “What if you had 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


71 


been seen and recognized ! She should have 
known, if you did not, the grave risk you 
ran.” 

Aim^e was too loyal to acknowledge that 
she had been seen, so she only repeated her 
former statement: “ It would not have mat- 
tered. I am of no importance at all ; nobody 
thinks of me.” 

“Apparently not,” said Lennox Kyrle dryly. 
To his credit it may be said that nothing had 
so completely disillusioned him with regard to 
Fanny Berrien, not even her perfidy toward 
himself, as her selfishness toward her young 
cousin. To take advantage of a child’s igno- 
rance and generosity, to put her into a position 
that might have seriously compromised her, 
seemed to him an act so unworthy, that he 
could not entertain a shade of respect for the 
woman who was capable of it. “ But it does 
not follow that, because nobody thinks of you, 
nobody should think of you,” he went on with 
energy. “ You should think of yourself, and 
not allow your cousin to make use of you in 
this manner.” 

“ I am quite willing to be made use of, if I 


72 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


am not asked to do anything wrong,” said 
Aim^e, simply ; “ and it seemed to me that it 
would have been worse in Fanny to go away 
with you, than to send me to tell you that she 
could not go ” 

“ Perhaps so,” said he, unable to resist smil- 
ing, “ and I am quite willing to acknowledge 
that it was better she did not keep her ap- 
pointment — better to break faith than keep it 
with an unwilling heart ; but she might have 
had courage enough to own the truth herself.” 

“ She was afraid of you,” said Aim^e, can- 
didly. “And then there was the danger of 
her being seen. If Mr. Meredith had seen 
her-^^ 

She stopped short — confusion and alarm 
painted on her face — conscious how far her 
tongue had betrayed her. There was an in- 
stant’s hope that Lennox Kyrle would not 
observe the name which had slipped out, but 
the next moment proved that hope vain. 

“ It would have been awkward, certainly, 
if Mr. — Meredith, did you say? — had seen 
her,” he replied quietly. “ But how if he had 
seen you ? Perhaps he did ! ” (with a sudden 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


73 


flash of comprehension). “ I remember now 
that after you left, as I stood watching to see 
you safely home, I noticed a man on the sea 
wall who seemed watching you also. If that 
is the case, he shall understand the truth. I 
will go to him myself.” 

“Oh, no, no!” cried Aim^e, in an agony 
of apprehension. “ You must not think of 
such a thing 1 Y ou would only do harm to 
Fanny, and no good to me — for how does it 
matter what Mr. Meredith thinks of me.? I 
am of no importance.” 

“ Y ou have said that several times,” an- 
swered Kyrle, “ but I beg to differ with you. 
Because you are a child now, it does not fol- 
low that you will always be a child, and the 
time must come when you will understand that 
it is of great importance that you should not 
be suspected of making midnight appoint- 
ments like that of last night. It was in a 
measure my fault that you were sent on such 
an errand, so I am bound in honor to let the 
truth be known.” 

“And ruin Fanny’s prospects ? ” said Aim^e, 
who felt that the situation was critical, and that 


74 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


something must be done at once to restrain 
the impetuosity of this young man. It was 
characteristic of her that the first idea which 
occurred to her was of an appeal to his gen- 
erosity. “You can do that,” she went on, 
fixing him with her dark, earnest eyes, “ but 
it will seem like a revenge — and a very mean 
one. You will injure Fanny, you will make a 
scandal that will almost kill my aunt, and you 
will do me no good — for nobody knows any- 
thing now except Mr. Meredith, and he cares 
nothing abput me. But if you go to him, 
everybody will soon know something, though 
not the truth.” 

Lennox did not answer immediately. He 
simply stared at her, so much was he struck 
by her decision and good sense. It was true 
what she said. By interfering he could do no 
good, and it would certainly look like a re- 
venge — “ and a very mean one.” Aimee had 
instinctively struck the right key. While a 
man of different nature might have stretched 
out eager hands for any form of revenge, this 
man drew back from the chance put into his 
hand as if from a viper. 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


75 


“You are right,” he said, after a moment. 
“ I should place myself in a false position by 
interfering, and perhaps do more harm than 
good. But, all the same, it is a shame that 
the truth should not be known, and a greater 
shame that your cousin should trade upon 
your generosity. However, you will say that 
is no affair of mine. It is true. And since I 
can do no good to any one except by going 
away, I will go without loss of time. Only 
one thing more : besides my message, will you 
deliver this into your cousin’s hand } I have 
no longer the right to retain it — nor the in- 
clination.” 

He drew from his pocket as he spoke, and 
gave to her, a small golden locket which con- 
tained, Aim^e afterward discovered, a picture 
of Fanny and a curl of her sunny hair. As 
she received it, a voice suddenly sounded in 
the hall which brought dismay to her soul, 
for it was the voice of Mrs. Shreve, and this 
is what Mrs. Shreve was saying : 

“ Come in, if you please, sir. I will send 
and let Mrs. Berrien and Miss Vincent know 
that you are here.” 


76 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


“ Miss Vincent !” said Aim6e, in a fright- 
ened whisper. “ That is me — and nobody ever 
comes to see me ! Who can it be } ” 

Meanwhile Mrs. Shreve’s voice went on 
amiably : “ You wish to see them in private? 
Then step into my sitting-room, where you 
will be altogether private, and — Oh ! Miss 
A imde I ” 

It was a tableau for a moment — the open 
door in which stood Mrs. Shreve, bonneted 
and shawled ; Aim^e a picture of confusion, 
with the locket in her hand ; and Lennox 
Kyrle, tall, straight, and handsome, standing 
before her. The scene, to all appearances, 
told a story evident to the dullest compre- 
hension ; and it was not alone to Mrs. 
Shreve’s eyes that it was revealed. Behind 
her was a young man whose glance over her 
shoulder took it all in. 

The tableau lasted only a moment ; for 
Aim^e, seeing the face over Mrs. Shreve’s 
shoulder, uttered an exclamation of surprise, 
in which pleasure evidently bore no part. 
“ Percy,” she cried, “ is it you ? ” 

“Yes, it is I,” answered the young man. 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


77 


coming forward as Mrs. Shreve moved aside. 
He cast a look of angry suspicion at Kyrle, 
then, taking Aim^e’s hand — which she made 
no movement to offer — bent and kissed her 
cheek : “You did not expect to see me,’' he 
said. 

“No; why should I?” she answered, 
blushing so furiously that it was evident his 
salute was not a customary matter. “ Why 
have you come ? ” 

“ To see you — and to take you home,” he 
answered, with another suspicious glance at 
Kyrle. 

This the latter returned with one of coldly 
careless scrutiny, and then held out his hand 
to Aimee. 

“ I will not intrude longer,” he said. “You 
will wish me bon voyage f I am leaving St. 
Augustine immediately.” 

“ Oh, yes,” answered Aim^e, eagerly. “ I 
wish you bon voyage with all my heart, and I 
shall not forget — ” 

She paused abruptly — remembering that 
she must not say, “ I shall not forget to give 

your message to Fanny” — and of course the 
6 


78 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


sudden pause and blush which accompanied 
it could bear but one interpretation to the 
looker-on. 

“ I shall not forget your kindness,” said 
Kyrle, conscious of the false position in which 
she was placed, and angry at his inability to 
right it. But, fearing to do harm and compli- 
cate matters further by any attempt in that 
direction, he felt that the best thing he could 
do was to go. So with a parting bow he left 
the room, hearing, as he went, an angry voice 
saying : 

“Who is that man, Aimde.^ — and what is 
the meaning of this ? ” 


VII. 

Aim£e looked straightly and bravely into 
the questioner’s face. 

“ That,” she said, quietly, “ is Mr. Kyrle. 
You do not know him, so we need not discuss 
his visit. Tell me why you have come for 
me. Is mamma ill ? ” 

“No,” answered the young man, whose 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


79 


sufficiently good-looking countenance was very 
much disfigured by the frown with which he 
was regarding her ; “ she is very well, but it 
is necessary that you should go home at 
once. And I did not come a day too soon, 
if this is how you are engaged.’' 

“ What do you mean by this f ” asked 
Aim^e, indignantly — Mrs. Shreve having with- 
drawn in search of Mrs. Berrien. “ I do not 
know why you should speak to me in such a 
manner because you find a visitor — ” 

“ A visitor ! ” interrupted the other, angrily. 
“ Do your visitors usually leave such cards as 
that.?” 

He pointed, as he spoke, to the locket 
which Aim^e had forgotten that she still held 
in her hand. She now thrust it hastily into 
her pocket ; but, though her face crimsoned, 
she still regarded him with dauntless eyes. 

“ It is no affair of yours,” she said. “ I am 
not called upon to give you any explanation. 
I am here under Aunt Alice’s care.” 

“An admirable care it seems to be,” said 
he, sarcastically. “ It is fortunate that I have 
come to take you out of her hands.” 


8o A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

“ I can not understand why any one should 
have thought it necessary to send you/’ said 
Aim^e. “ It is a new thing that what I do 
should be considered of importance by any 
one. 

Then there was a moment’s silence. It 
was impossible for Mr. Percy J oscelyn — which 
was this young gentleman’s name — to deny 
that it was indeed a very new thing for Aimde’s 
actions to be of importance in the opinion of 
her family. Her repeated assertion that it 
did not matter to any one what she did was 
founded on most undeniable fact, or had been 
a short time before. And if all was changed 
now, if her actions had suddenly become of 
very great importance, it was for a reason dif- 
ficult to state when thus confronted with what 
yesterday had been the truth. 

Fortunately, a diversion occurred at this 
point which relieved him from the inconven- 
ience of answering her remark. The door 
opened and Mrs. Berrien entered. 

“Why, Percy, how do you do?” she said. 
“ This is a great surprise.” 

“Yes,” said young Joscelyn, as they shook 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. gj 

hands, “ I suppose so. But I have come for 
Aim^e.’^ 

“ Indeed !” said Mrs. Berrien, looking as 
much surprised as Aim^e herself. “What is 
the matter ? Is her mother ill ? 

“No, my stepmother is in very good 
health,” was the reply. “ But it is necessary 
that Aimde should go home. There has 
been — ahem ! — a great change in her circum- 
stances.” 

“In her circumstances!” repeated Mrs. 
Berrien, while Aim^e’s eyes grew wide and 
startled. “ What has happened ? ” 

“ She has inherited a fortune,” said the 
young man in tones of such solemnity as the 
announcement warranted. 

^'Aimde — inherited a fortune!” cried Mrs. 
Berrien. If he had announced that Aimde 
had suddenly been transformed into a royal 
princess it could hardly have seemed to her 
more incredible. “ You are surely mistaken.” 

Percy Joscelyn smiled with an air of supe- 
rior knowledge. “In such matters there is not 
much room for mistake,” he said. “ You have 
heard, I presume, of Henry Dunstan ? ” 


82 A COMEDY OF ELOFEMENT. 

“ My brother’s half-brother — my stepmoth- 
er’s son by another marriage ? Of course. But 
he went to South America and died years 
ago.” 

“ On the contrary, he died only last month ; 
and, having lost his wife and only child, he 
made a will just before he died leaving his 
fortune to the children of his half-brother, 
Edward Vincent, of whom, as you know, 
Aim^e is the only child.” 

“ My dear Aimde, this is indeed a change 
for you ! ” exclaimed Mrs. Berrien, turning and 
embracing the startled girl with honest warmth. 
“ I am as pleased as if a fortune had been left 
to myself. Now I need feel no more anxiety 
about your future.” 

“ I shall never forget who was the only 
person who ever did feel any,” said Aim^e, 
clinging to her as though some danger threat- 
ened. 

Mrs. Berrien smiled. She knew that it was 
true; that she had indeed been the only per- 
son who had ever given a thought to the 
future of the fatherless girl, and she was not 
sorry that Aimde should recognize the fact. 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 83 

It was the reward for a good action, which she 
deserved, because no such reward had seemed 
even remotely possible when the action was 
performed. 

Naturally, however, this was not very pleas- 
ant for the representative of the Joscelyns to 
hear ; and, being a young man with a consid- 
erable drop of venom in his nature, Mr. Percy 
Joscelyn felt impelled to reply to the im- 
plied charge by bringing a countercharge. 

“ I am sorry that Aim^e imagines you to 
be the only person who felt any anxiety for 
her future,” he said, stiffly. “ But if I may 
judge by the position in which I found her 
when I arrived, it was at least not a trouble- 
some anxiety in the present.” 

Mrs. Berrien looked at him with haughty 
surprise. “May I inquire what you mean?” 
she asked. “You have found her in exactly 
the position she would have occupied as my 
daughter.” 

“Indeed!” said he, with what Aimde in- 
wardly called “ Percy’s disagreeable smile.” 
“ You are, of course, the best judge of that. 
But I found her with a young man, evidently 


84 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

exchanging love-tokens. If that is a liberty 
you would allow your daughter, I can only 
say I am sure my stepmother would prefer an 
anxiety that would take another form.” 

Regarding him for a moment as if she 
thought he had taken leave of his senses, Mrs. 
Berrien then turned to Aim^e : 

“ What is the meaning of this ? ” she asked, 
“ What is he talking about ? There is nothing 
that I can imagine more improbable than that 
you were ‘ with a young man exchanging love- 
tokens.’ ” 

“ I was not — O Aunt Alice, I was not ! ” 
cried poor Aim^e, divided between indig- 
nant wrath and the desire to burst into tears. 
“ Percy did find a — ^young man here ; but he 
was only a — ^visitor.” 

“ But when have you taken to receiving 
such visitors } ” said Mrs. Berrien with amaze- 
ment. “And I was not even aware that you 
knew any young men — O Aim^e, this is in- 
deed a shock. I could not have believed it. 
I should have said that you were one of the 
last girls in the world to be guilty of such con- 
duct.” 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 85 

“ I have not been guilty of any conduct 
to which you need object, Aunt Alice,” said 
Aim^e earnestly. “ I would not deceive you — 
indeed, I would not.” 

“Then who was the visitor Percy found 
with you ? ” asked Mrs. Berrien. 

Aimde looked at her piteously without 
speaking — for did not loyalty to Fanny seal 
her lips? Had not Fanny been as anxious to 
keep the knowledge of Lennox Kyrle’s visit 
from her mother as from Mr. Meredith ? The 
girl was so absorbed in this thought that she 
forgot how useless it was to attempt to con- 
ceal a name which had been revealed to Per- 
cy Joscelyn, and which he now hastened to 
supply. 

“Aimde seems to have forgotten the name 
of her visitor,” he said, “ but she informed me 
that it was Kyrle.” 

“Kyrle!” repeated Mrs. Berrien. The 
truth flashed on her. She gave a searching 
glance at Aimde, and read the whole story in 
the girl’s beseeching eyes. She remembered 
then that Mrs. Shreve had told her that Mr. 
Meredith was in the parlor with Fanny. 


86 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

What could be plainer than that Fanny had 
sent Aim^e to ward off anything so undesir- 
able as the appearance of her old lover ? But 
with this knowledge came also the conscious- 
ness of an unpleasant dilemma. To tell the 
truth for Aim^e’s justification would be to put 
Fanny in the power of Percy Joscelyn, who 
would take pleasure, Mrs. Berrien felt sure, in 
injuring her by letting the truth be known. 
Could she do this.? Was such a sacrifice de- 
manded of her ? The woman whose heart was 
set upon her daughter’s brilliant marriage, yet 
who was of an upright nature and had honest- 
ly done her best for this orphan girl, knew an 
instant of sharp struggle — and then Aim6e 
spoke : 

“Yes, it was Mr. Kyrle, Aunt Alice,” she 
said. “ I hesitated to tell you, because I know 
you do not like him. He was here only a few 
minutes, and he is going away immediately.” 
She paused for an instant, then added, “ I do 
not expect Percy to trust me, \y\xt you will, I 
am sure.” 

“Yes, my dear,” said Mrs. Berrien, with a 
sense of mingled shame and relief. “ I should 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 8/ 

have to forget all that I have ever known of 
you if I could not trust you. I am glad to 
hear that Mr. Kyrle is going away. But 
Percy” — looking at that young man — “may 
be sure that the visit to you had no such sig- 
nificance as he was quick to imagine.” 

“ I have not much imagination,” said Mr. 
Joscelyn, “but I am quick to trust the evi- 
dence of my eyes ; and if Aim^e will kindly 
produce a locket which she put in her pocket 
a minute ago, you may change your opinion 
with regard to the significance of Mr. Kyrle’s 
visit.” 

“ I can trust Aimee,” repeated Mrs. Berrien, 
trembling lest Aim^e should produce the 
demanded locket, “ and I will not attempt to 
force her confidence. It is not to-day for the 
first time that her actions have become of im- 
portance to me,” she added with much stateli- 
ness of manner, “ and therefore I do not need 
to be schooled in my duty toward her. Now 
we will dismiss the subject. When do you 
wish to take her away ? ” 

“The sooner the better, I think,” replied 
the young man with considerable spitefulness 


88 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

of emphasis. “ There is, of course, much to be 
done.” 

“ But Aim^e is too young to do anything 
with regard to business,” said Mrs. Berrien. 

“Her mother is anxious to see her,” said 
Mr. Joscelyn — a statement which made Mrs. 
Berrien smile, and produced in Aim^e a sense 
of deepening amazement — “ and it is necessary 
that she should begin at once to prepare for 
the position she will occupy.” 

“ What will that be ? ” asked Mrs. Berrien, 
a little dryly. “ Have you learned the amount 
of her fortune ? ” 

“ N ot precisely ; but the letters received 
from Rio speak of it as very large.” 

“ And so you are transformed into a South 
American heiress, my dear little Aim^e ? ” said 
Mrs. Berrien, with a smile, putting her arm 
caressingly around the girl, who answered, be- 
tween a laugh and a sob : 

“ I do not know what to think of myself 
under such a transformation.” 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


VIII. 

If Aim^e did not know what to think 
of herself under the transformation of her 
changed fortunes, those around her knew very 
well what to think. Never again would any 
act of hers be reckoned of no importance by 
the world, which, whatever shrines it may de- 
sert, is always faithful to that of the golden 
calf; and when Fanny Berrien learned that it 
was a great heiress whom she had sent to keep 
her rendezvous on the sea wall, and whose 
name she had, in the minds of two people at 
least, linked with that of Lennox Kyrle, she 
stood aghast at the realization. 

“ For, of course, since Aimde is to be such 
an important person, I have done her a great 
injustice,” she confessed to her mother. “ I 
should never have sent her if I had not 
thought her too insignificant for it to matter; 
and the same consideration made me say what 
I did to Mr. Meredith. How could it harm 
Aimde, I thought ! and now — ” 

A dramatic gesture concluded the sen- 


90 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


tence, but did not lighten the cloud on Mrs. 
Berrien’s brow. Indeed, Fanny said afterward 
that she had never seen her mother so angry 
as on this occasion. 

“If the change of fortune had not oc- 
curred, and Aimde had remained as insignifi- 
cant as you thought her, I should say that you 
were guilty of shameful and inexcusable con- 
duct,” said Mrs. Berrien. “To send her — a 
child under my care — on an errand that might 
have compromised her even more than it has 
done ; and then to shield yourself by placing 
her in a false position — I could not have be- 
lieved you capable of it! And the question 
now is, what am I to do? I can not leave 
Aim^e under the imputation of having been 
ready to elope with Lennox Kyrle.” 

“I see no particular harm in the imputa- 
tion,” said Fanny, “ especially since Mr. Mere- 
dith is the only person who knows of it, and I 
will see that he holds his tongue.” 

“You forget that Percy Joscelyn found 
Mr. Kyrle with Aim^e.” 

“And what then? He has only his suspi- 
cions of some love affair between them — and 


A COxMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


91 


why should not Aim^e be supposed to have a 
love affair? I had half a dozen at her age.” 

“Fanny, I am ashamed of you!” said her 
mother, severely. “Is this a proper spirit in 
which to look at a matter in which you have 
been gravely and deeply at fault ? Have you 
no generosity, that you are willing to let your 
young cousin bear the consequences of your 
frivolity ? ” 

“ It is her generosity that makes her will- 
ing to bear them,” said Fanny. “ But if you 
insist, mamma, I can set the matter straight, so 
far as she is concerned, by telling Mr. Mere- 
dith the truth. Of course, he will never speak 
to me again, and I don’t clearly see how that 
will do any good to Aimde. But still, if you 
insist — ” 

“ I suppose I ought to insist,” said Mrs. 
Berrien, in a low tone. “It is a shame if I 
do not. And yet — you have put me as well 
as Aimde in a position for which I shall 
never forgive you 1 ” turning sharply to her 
daughter — “you have made it almost impos- 
sible for me to say what must be done. I 
should like to see you married to Mr. Mere- 


92 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


dith, but I shall always feel that such a mar- 
riage is bought too dearly if it can only be 
bought by putting your young cousin in a 
position which may throw a cloud over the 
brilliant prospects of her life.” 

“ Mamma, if you will excuse me, that is all 
nonsense!” said Fanny. “ How can it possi- 
bly throw a cloud over Aim^e’s prospects 
— which I heartily wish were mine 1 — that one 
or two or three people believe her to have had 
a youthful love affair with Lennox Kyrle? 
Lennox is a very nice person — though you 
would never believe it — and he may be a fa- 
mous man some day.” 

“It is you who are talking nonsense,” said 
Mrs. Berrien, curtly. “ It is not necessary to 
discuss Mr. Kyrle. Fortunately, he is a gentle- 
man — there is that much to be said for him ; 
otherwise we will put him aside. You say 
that it can not injure Aim^e’s prospects to be 
supposed by two or three people to have had 
a youthful love affair with him. In the first 
place, what is known to two or three people 
will certainly be known to many more; and, 
in the second place, it is a great injury to any 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


93 


girl, in the opinion of people whose opinions 
are worth consideration, to have had any such 
affair, much less to be supposed to have been 
on the verge of an elopement. As I have 
said, it would be bad enough if Aim^e had re- 
mained insignificant; but noWy vfith. her pros- 
pects, I can not endure it ! ” 

“ Then my prospects are at an end, and I 
might as well bury myself at once!” cried 
Fanny, who began to fear that her mother was 
seriously in earnest. “It is not only that I 
shall lose Mr. Meredith — for of course there 
are as good fish in the sea as ever came out 
of it — but I shall be hopelessly compromised, 
and I can not even fall back upon Lennox 
Kyrle, for he has gone off in a rage, swearing 
that he is done with me forever. So you 
might as well make up your mind, mamma, 
that I shall be left on your hands.” 

“ Fanny, you distract me ! ” said her mother. 
“ Do you propose that I shall let this thing 
go on, and suffer Aimde, who does not know 
what she is doing, to start in life with this 
story fastened upon her } ” 

“ Aimee knows perfectly well what she is 

7 


94 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


doing,” said Fanny, “ and if she does not mind 
why should you? As for her changed posi- 
tion, when people have money they can do 
exactly what they please, and the world never 
dares to find fault. That is my experience. 
But here she comes herself. Ask her what 
she wishes. I promise to abide by her de- 
cision.” 

It was indeed Aimde, who entered like an 
angel of peace. She never looked more child- 
like or gentle, yet her simplicity now as ever 
was the simplicity of good sense, and as she 
came forward she glanced appealingly from 
the anxious daughter to the distracted mother. 

“ I was in the next room ; I could not 
help hearing. Aunt Alice,” she said. “ I have 
come to thank you for thinking so much of 
me, and to beg you to let things be as they 
are.” 

“ My dear child, it is generous of you to 
desire it,” said Mrs. Berrien, “ but I do not 
feel that I have a right to accept such a sac- 
rifice. I must think of your future.” 

“Have you not always thought of me?” 
said the girl, coming forward and in her ear- 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


95 


nestness kneeling down by her aunt’s chair. 
“ You know, and / know, that nobody else has 
thought of me at all. And will you not let 
me repay you in the least for your kindness 
and your thought? It is such a little thing 
that I want you to let me do. Fanny is right. 
What difference does it make whether two or 
three people believe that I was going to elope 
with Mr. Kyrle? It can not hurt me ; but if 
it were known of her it would hurt her very 
much. I saw Mr. Meredith this morning, and 
I am certain that he would never forgive her 
if he learned the truth now. It is too late. 
You can make things worse, Aunt Alice, but 
you can not make them any better now.” 

Mrs. Berrien gave a little gasp. It was 
true, all that the simple, quiet voice said. 
Things might easily be made worse, but it 
was too late to make them better. She per- 
ceived this, and was not sorry to perceive it, 
even while despising herself for being con- 
vinced. But what could she do, with Fanny’s 
imploring eyes on one side, and on the other 
Aimde’s resolution? 

“ I ought not to yield,” she said. “ Whether 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


things were made better or worse, the truth 
should be told.” 

“ Oh, no ; if the truth would do harm, in- 
stead of good, why should you tell it now ? ” 
said Aim^e, with guileless casuistry. “ I wanted 
Fanny to tell Mr. Meredith at first, but she 
would not, and now it is too late. You must 
let things be, dear Aunt Alice. Promise me 
that you will let them be.” 

The insistent voice and eyes carried their 
point. Mrs. Berrien hesitated a moment longer, 
then meekly yielded. 

“ I am wrong, I know I am wrong,” she said, 
“ but I can not withstand you both. Aim^e, I 
shall never forgive myself if this throws any 
shadow of trouble on your life. Remember, 
if it ever does, and you wish the truth known, 
call upon me and I will tell it.” 

Aim^e shook her head, smiling. 

“ I am not afraid that the occasion will 
ever come,” she said. “ I am too glad to be 
able to do something for you, who have done 
so much for me.” 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


97 


IX. 

But Mrs. Berrien was not the only person 
who felt concern about the very unjust suspi- 
cion that might be cast upon Aim^e. Lennox 
Kyrle, as he went out, with Percy Joscelyn’s 
angry question ringing in his ears, said to him- 
self, indignantly, that it was shameful that 
such a misconception should be allowed for 
a moment to exist, and that, if Fanny had 
neither the courage nor sense of justice suffi- 
cient to induce her to speak, it was his plain 
duty to do so. Only one consideration de- 
terred him, and this was the consideration 
Aim^e had so artfully brought to bear, that 
to reveal the truth would on his part appear 
to be the revenge of a jilted man. 

“ My lips are sealed,” he thought, wrath- 
fully, “ and Fanny Berrien knows it, so she 
allows this child, who is too young and igno- 
rant to understand what she is doing, to bear 
the consequences and the odium of her con- 
duct. It is infamous, and I will not submit to 
it ! Something must be done.” 


98 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

But to declare in the warmth of righteous 
indignation that something must be done, and 
to decide what that something should be, were 
unfortunately very different things. Mr. Kyrle 
felt himself impotent in the face of the double 
force of feminine resolution arrayed against 
him, and yet he was determined that matters 
should not be left as they were. The more he 
thought of it, the more he was revolted by 
Fanny Berrien’s selfishness and duplicity, and 
the more eager he became that she should be 
made to bear the burden of her own misdoing. 
But how was this to be accomplished.^ He 
walked away from Mrs. Shreve’s door after 
asking himself the question, and finding no 
answer short of that method which would be 
open to the suspicion of being dictated by re- 
venge. One thing, however, he determined — 
that he would not leave St. Augustine at once, 
as he had declared his intention of doing. 
That Fanny Berrien very much desired his de- 
parture, was in his present mood an incentive 
to remain. Y es, he would stay for a day at least, 
and see if circumstances might not make it pos- 
sible for him to set matters in their true light. 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


99 


At the hotel where he had taken up his 
quarters — for this was before the era of palatial 
hostelries in the quaint old Spanish town — he 
saw Mr. Meredith and Percy Joscelyn, and 
might have been amused by the glances, not of 
love, which both men cast upon him, but for 
the fact that he clearly understood the mis- 
conception in the mind of each ; and to be 
held guilty of tempting a girl hardly out of 
childhood to elopement, was as outraging to 
his pride as to his sense of integrity. It is to 
be regretted that he did not encounter Miss 
Berrien at this period, for that lively and easy- 
going young lady would assuredly have heard 
some truths, clothed in caustic language, which 
might have proved of benefit to her. But in- 
stead of Miss Berrien, it was Aimde whom he 
encountered again, in a manner most unex- 
pected to both. One of the girFs greatest 
pleasures during her stay in St. Augustine had 
been to spend much of her time in an orange 
grove on the outskirts of the town, to which 
she had a right of entrance, as it belonged to 
Mrs. Shreve’s son. Other people also went 
there occasionally to walk under the pictur- 


lOO 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


esque trees and pluck the golden fruit that 
gleamed out of the glossy foliage ; but Aim^e 
would take books or work with her, and spend 
hours alone in what seemed to her an en- 
chanted world of soft sunshine, balmy air, and 
sweet odors. It was therefore a place that 
she felt she could not leave St. Augustine 
without seeing again — the more especially 
that, after the events of the morning and the 
tremendous change that seemed impending 
over her, she needed a little time for quiet 
reflection. And quiet reflection in the house 
with her aunt and Fanny was an impossible 
thing. 

So it came to pass that, in the last hour of 
a perfect afternoon, Lennox Kyrle, who had 
been taking a walk while chewing the cud 
of unpleasant reflections, was attracted by the 
appearance of a figure coming along the road 
on which he was tramping. His sight was 
remarkably keen, and after an instant, although 
the person was still distant, he had no doubt 
who it was. 

“ It is that little girl ! ” he said to himself 
“ I call this good luck, for really the only thing 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


lOI 


I can do, as far as I perceive, is to make 
another appeal to her to tell the truth. Y et to 
go back to that house to see her was impos- 
sible. So it is surely a fortunate chance that 
brings her here — and alone, too ! ” 

The next moment he feared that he had 
congratulated himself too soon. The figure 
paused an instant and then disappeared. Had 
she also recognized him, and desired to avoid 
meeting him ? He thought it likely, but de- 
termined grimly that she should not succeed. 
Since to reach Fanny and scorch her with 
reproaches was impossible, his next best chance 
was to work upon Aimde, and this he vowed to 
himself that he would not be prevented from 
doing. If she had gone into some house, he 
would remain on the road until nightfall in 
order to waylay her on her return home ; but 
if she had perhaps taken another road — The 
suspicion of this made him quicken his steps, 
so that a few minutes after Aim^e’s disappear- 
ance he reached the spot where he had seen 
her last. No house was in sight, but it was 
evident that she had entered a gate which led 
into an orange grove, the beautiful alleys of 


102 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


which he had admired as he passed it on his 
way out an hour before. Indeed, as he gazed 
eagerly and quickly down the green vistas 
filled with sunset light he perceived what he 
sought — the graceful form pacing slowly along 
one of the overarched ways. 

To decide and to act was more a synony- 
mous thing with Lennox Kyrle than with 
most men. He did not give a thought to any 
question of intrusion or trespass. He opened 
the gate and went in, striding quickly down 
the path in which he perceived the slender, 
girlish figure. He was not conscious at the 
moment of bestowing much attention upon 
the scene around him, but its aspect came 
back to him so vividly afterward, that the sen- 
sitive plate which we call memory must have 
retained it with unusual fidelity. Long after- 
ward he could see distinctly the floods of level 
sunlight slanting through the tree-trunks and 
turning the very air to amber, the wealth of 
glistening evergreen foliage, the boughs laden 
with what seemed the golden apples of classic 
fable, the indefinable charm of the Southern 
atmosphere, and above all the delicate, child- 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


103 


like presence like a vision of youth flitting 
down the sunlit vista. 

But if there was a satisfaction to him in 
thus finding an opportunity to deliver the 
thoughts which had turned so hotly within 
him all day, there was not the least satisfac- 
tion for poor Aimee, when, hearing a quick 
tread advancing behind her, she turned to con- 
front the last person in the world whom she 
had the least desire to see. She stood still, 
clasping her hands instinctively together as she 
uttered a low cry of dismay. 

“ O Mr. Kyrle ! " she gasped. “ I hoped — 
I thought you had gone av/ay.” 

Little as Kyrle was in a mood for smil- 
ing, he could not but smile at this ingenuous 
address. “ I am sorry to disappoint you,” he 
said, “ and to break my word — for I promised to 
go, didn’t I } But there are reasons that seemed 
to make it imperative for me to remain a lit- 
tle longer. And, as it chanced just now, while 
I was taking a walk, I saw you enter this 
place, and I hoped you would pardon me if 
I followed you.” 

“ But why ? ” inquired Aimde, far too dis- 


104 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


turbed to be polite. “ Why should you want 
to see me, and why — oh, why haven’t you 
gone away ? Fanny would be dreadfully wor- 
ried if she knew you were still here.” 

“ What Miss Berrien might think does not 
trouble me in the least,” he replied, quietly ; 
“ but I am sorry to annoy you. I really did 
not think, however, that merely seeing me 
would annoy you so much. Why should 
it } I have no intention of harming any 
one.” 

“Without intention you may do great 
harm,” she replied, quickly. “ And I can not 
understand why you should stay, when you 
promised — ” 

“ I will tell you why,” he said as she paused. 
“ But is there no place where we can sit down 
for a few minutes? I will not detain you 
long.” 

She pointed to a bench not far off, a fa- 
vorite seat of her own, and one to which she 
had been on her way when he overtook her. 
“We can sit down there,” she said, with mani- 
fest reluctance, “ but I do not see the neces- 
sity — ” 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


105 


“ Never mind seeing it,” he said. “ Simply 
oblige me — if I must put the matter on that 
basis. I am sure you will admit that I have 
been badly enough treated to merit a little 
consideration.” 

“ You have certainly been very badly 
treated,” said Aim^e, her eyes softening with 
sympathy at the memory of his wrongs. “ I 
hope you don’t think I forget it, or that I can 
ever cease to blame Fanny; but — but making 
things worse can not make them better. And 
it seems to me that you can only make them 
worse by staying here.” 

“As far as Miss Berrien is concerned,” he 
said, as they walked toward the bench and 
seated themselves, “ I assure you that I have 
not the least desire to make them either worse 
or better. It seems strange — does it not.^” — 
he broke off abruptly, “ that this time yesterday 
I was looking at the setting sun filled with 
thoughts of her, and longings for the moment 
that would bring us together, and that now 
there is not a woman whom I know in the 
world that I would not sooner entertain the 
thought of marrying. It is a great change 


I 06 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

to be wrought in twenty-four hours. And do 
you know what has chiefly wrought it ? ” 

“ Her conduct, I suppose,” answered Aimee. 
“ It was bad enough to have wrought any- 
thing ; and yet,” she added, reflectively, “ I 
don’t really believe that Fanny herself thinks 
it was very bad. She is-^light, you know.” 

“ Yes,” assented Kyrle, dryly, “very light. 
However, what she thinks is a matter of no 
importance. And it is not her conduct to me 
that has chiefly wrought the change of which 
I speak, but her conduct to you^ 

“To me?” said Aim^e, looking up at him 
with a startled expression. “ Oh, pray, don’t 
think of that. You don’t understand — Fanny 
never meant to do me any harm. I was per- 
fectly willing to go last night, and it was not 
her fault that Mr. Meredith, instead of going 
home, as he should have done, stayed on the 
sea wall and saw me.” 

“ Pardon me,” said Kyrle, “ but I think it 
was distinctly her fault. To have sent you on 
such an errand was in itself absolutely inexcus- 
able ; but afterward to let it be supposed that 
you went of your own accord — that you were 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


107 


the person about to elope — there is no lan- 
guage strong enough to characterize such cow- 
ardly duplicity. You wonder why I am still 
here? It is because I determined to see you, 
and say to you that if you do not tell the 
truth, I will. This shameful deception, this 
trading on the generosity of a child, shall not 
continue.” 

Aim^e looked up at him. When had she 
seen any one so moved with indignation and 
generous wrath ? She thought again that this 
man was far from the ductile wax Fanny Ber- 
rien imagined him to be ; but, righteous as his 
resentment and anger were, it would not do to 
allow him to act upon them. Yet how could 
she hope to influence or bend the fiery resolu- 
tion that breathed in his look and words ? 

“It is too late,” she said at last. “ I have 
promised, and I have made others promise, 
that things shall be left as they are, and noth- 
ing would induce me to speak. Fanny is self- 
ish and thoughtless, but she never intended 
deception. It all — came about because Mr. 
Meredith frightened her, and she was afraid to 
tell the truth. Fanny is a little of a coward. 


I08 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

you know. She is very sorry — really sorry, I 
assure you ; but if she told Mr. Meredith now, 
he would never forgive her.’^ 

“ And so you advise her to continue to de- 
ceive a man whose affection for her should en- 
title him at least to fair dealing?” said Kyrle, 
bitterly. “ Is a man, then, never certain of 
truth from a woman ? In Fanny Berrien I 
am not surprised. But your eyes look as if you 
ought to know what honor and honesty are.” 

The eyes of which he spoke filled with tears. 
No other reproach could have cut Aim^e 
so deeply. Twenty - four hours earlier she 
would have said that honor and honesty were 
the forces that would always rule her life ; and 
now — she could not deny that from thi^ high 
standard she had ignominiously fallen. And 
how was it possible to explain what compel- 
ling impulse of gratitude had made it seem 
a duty to violate the strongest instincts im- 
planted in her nature ? She looked at Kyrle 
with the overbrimming crystal drops almost 
ready to fall, and he, meeting the pained hu- 
mility of that look, felt as if he had struck a 
helpless child. 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


109 


“ I suppose it was wrong to have helped 
Fanny when it came to a question of decep- 
tion,” she said, “ but you do not know how un- 
kind and ungrateful it would have seemed of 
me to refuse. It looked such a little thing — 
just to say that it was I whom Mr. Meredith 
saw last night. And that was true. Oh, yes ” 
(quickly), “ I know that it is as bad to imply 
a falsehood as to tell it. But — but what could 
I do I owe so much to my aunt ! ” 

“ I have no right to hold you to account,” 
said Kyrle. “ Only let me ask if you think it 
possible to owe any debt of gratitude great 
enough to demand a sacrifice of integrity in 
payment 1 ” 

“ I don’t know,” she answered, simply. “ I 
am sorry if I have done anything very wrong, 
but I will tell you why I felt compelled to 
make almost any sacrifice to shield Fanny.” 
She hesitated a moment. It seemed a difficult 
subject to approach, and Kyrle was about to 
beg her not to distress herself in order to give 
him an explanation to which he had no claim, 
when she went on hastily: “You see, I am 
only partly an orphan. My father is dead, but 


no 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


my mother is living and has married again. 
She is very much under the influence of Major 
Joscelyn — that is my stepfather — and I have 
always felt, though perhaps I was wrong, that 
she does not care much about me. The Jos- 
celyn s have never liked me ; so I was very un- 
happy at home, when Aunt Alice came and 
took me away. I can not tell you how differ- 
ent life was to me when I went to live with 
her and Fanny. They have both been so 
kind and affectionate, they have done so much 
for me, of whom no one else ever thought at 
all, that there is not anything — not ayiythingl' 
repeated the passionate young voice, “ that I 
would not do for them. And I can not regret 
what I have done, though I am sorry it seems 
to you so wrong.” 

“ It is chiefly wrong to yourself,” said 
Kyrle. “ I wish I could make you see this as 
I do. It is not less than a crime against your 
future to allow people to suppose — for what 
one person knows, many people are pretty 
certain to know — that you were not only en- 
gaged in a love affair, but on the point of 
eloping with me last night.” 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. m 

A deep blush, beautiful in its tint but pain- 
ful in its intensity, spread over her face. She 
looked away from him and her lip trembled. 
He saw that some instinct which had been 
dormant before was waking in her, and mak- 
ing her understand the outrage which such a 
misconception would do her childlike youth, 
and he pressed his advantage remorselessly. 

“ Y ou can not possibly comprehend what 
injury the story might do your life at some 
of its most critical moments,” he said ; “ but 
your aunt, Mrs. Berrien, will comprehend, and 
to her I shall go. I am deeply enough con- 
cerned in the matter to have a right to de- 
mand that the truth shall be told.” 

“ If you go to my aunt,” said Aimde, turn- 
ing upon him quickly, “you can distress her 
very much, but you can not tell her anything 
which she does not know. All that you have 
said about possible injury to me she has said 
and I had much trouble in persuading her to 
let things be as they are. You must not think 
any wrong of her. She knew nothing until 
Percy Joscelyn, my stepbrother — who came 
in, you remember, this morning — charged her 


1 12 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


with not having taken proper care of me, be- 
cause he found you in Mrs. Shreve’s sitting- 
room with me. It was like his effrontery to 
dare to speak so to her ! ” the girl interpolated, 
with flashing eyes. “Yesterday no Joscelyn 
of them all would have cared what became of 
me ; only Aunt Alice cared. But to-day, be- 
cause it seems they have learned that I am 
rich, Percy ventures to insult her ! ” 

Nothing could have surprised Kyrle more 
than this sudden flash of indignant anger in 
one who had seemed to him gentle to a fault. 
But he was a man of quick perceptions, and 
all the intense affectionateness, the passionate 
gratitude and loyalty of the girl’s nature, were 
revealed to him in that moment of emotion. 
He was deeply touched and interested, for in 
this instant he understood that it was no vul- 
gar love of intrigue, no lack of rectitude, no 
obtuseness toward the finest things of life, that 
had made Aimde play hei* part in Fanny Ber- 
rien’s commonplace comedy of flirtation. In- 
stead of comedy it had become tragedy to the 
girl, with her keen sense of honor, her high 
standard of loyalty, and her delicate instinct 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 113 

of the claim which love and trust given create 
in a generous mind. But there were motives, 
deep-rooted in her nature, strong enough to 
make her do violence to all these things and 
stand firm as Fanny’s shield. Kyrle almost 
forgot the point he was himself intent upon 
in his interest in the springs of feeling and 
action thus laid bare before him. 

“And so,” Aim^e went on, “when Aunt 
Alice heard that you had been there she knew, 
of course, what it meant, and she insisted on 
hearing everything. Then she said the truth 
must be told ; that Mr. Meredith must know 
why I went out last night ; that now I am rich 
— why are things so much more important 
when people happen to be rich ? — it would 
not do for any one to imagine that I had been 
going to elope. But Fanny said that Mr. 
Meredith would never forgive her if he heard 
the truth now, and I begged Aunt Alice on 
my knees to let me do this little thing in re- 
turn for all she has done for me. So at last 
she yielded, and I was very glad, and — and it 
can not be that you will go to her and make 
more trouble. Why should you concern your- 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


1 14 

self about me ? ” she demanded, turning to him 
with another but somewhat lesser flash in her 
eyes. “What is it to you if I do this.^” 

“ Well, for one thing,’^ replied Kyrle, “ I am 
myself somewhat concerned in it, for I assure 
you that I am not the kind of man to en- 
deavor to persuade a girl of your age to elope, 
and naturally the imputation of having done 
so is not very agreeable to me.” 

“ Oh ! ” said Aimee, with a look of contri- 
tion, “ I never thought of that. I forgot that 
it could not be pleasant for you to be sus- 
pected of such a thing. You must forgive 
me for being so selfish ; and yet ” — she paused 
an instant and gazed at him with a passion 
of entreaty in her eyes, which at that moment 
he thought were at once the most expressive 
and the most beautiful he had ever seen — “ and 
yet,” she went on in a low, thrilling tone, “ if 
you could only be generous and kind enough 
to allow it to be believed of you by the only 
person who knows anything about it, I, for 
one, should be grateful to you as long as I 
live!” 

But for the gravity of her appeal Kyrle 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


IIS 

could have laughed at the absurdity of the 
situation ; and yet her simplicity, her utter lack 
of thought for herself, touched him again be- 
yond measure. “ My dear child,” he said — for 
in truth he did not recall her name — “ I feel as 
if I might do almost anything, simply because 
you wished it ; but you do not know what you 
ask in this matter. You tell me that you 
have become rich, which means important in 
the world, and yet you desire to darken the 
fair promise of your youth with such a story 
as this would speedily become in the mouth 
of gossip. It is impossible — it would be a 
shame ! I can not consent to it.” 

“ But what can you do } ” she asked, drop- 
ping appeal and regarding him now with noth- 
ing less than defiance in her dark eyes. “ Is it 
not true that a gentleman is bound never to 
betray a woman’s secret ? How, then, can you 
betray Fanny’s? As for me, I will never 
speak.” 

There was no doubt of that. A hundred 
oaths could not have expressed resolution 
more firmly, more immovably, than those sim- 
ple words. And what could Kyrle reply? 


Il6 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

He knew well that he could not betray Miss 
Berrien’s secret, and it was the consciousness 
of this that had made him so determined to 
influence Aim^e. But now he was forced to 
own himself completely baffled. Aim^e’s 
strength of will was greater than any force he 
could bring to bear against it, and there was 
nothing left but to accept the situation created 
for him as best he might. 

“ Y ou are right,” he said at last. “ A gen- 
tleman is bound in honor to keep a woman’s 
secret ; so Miss Berrien is safe from me. If 
she chooses to shelter herself behind you, and 
you choose to allow her to do so, I have no 
power to prevent it. But I am sorry that I 
have failed completely to make you under- 
stand what a great mistake you are commit- 
ting. To save an unprincipled flirt from the 
consequences of her double-dealing, you are 
laying a cloud on your own life at its begin- 
ning.” 

“ I care nothing about that,” said the girl, 
with honest indifference. “ I am only sorry 
that Mr. Meredith should be deceived, and 
that you have to bear (though only in his 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


I17 

opinion) that imputation of which you spoke 
a few minutes ago. But I am going away 
to-morrow ; and since it seems I am of some 
importance now ” (a sigh), “ I suppose the 
Joscelyns will keep me always; so he and 
everybody else will soon forget all about this.” 

“ I assure you that I shall never forget it,” 
said Kyrle. “It is an episode calculated to 
remain in a man’s memory. The heartless, 
selfish woman who has made a fool of me, I 
shall indeed have no trouble in forgetting; 
but the part you have played, mistaken as it 
is, I shall long remember. I only wish you 
had displayed such qualities as you have 
proved yourself to possess, in a better cause. 
Given a good cause, you would be a heroine. 
And now ” — he rose as he spoke — “ this time 
it is good-by. Since I have failed completely 
in the end for which I remained here, I shall 
return at once to the yacht. Will you shake 
hands with me and tell me your name 1 One 
should surely know as much as that of a 
young lady with whom he is supposed to 
have nearly eloped.” 

But Aim^e could not jest on such a sub- 


Il8 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

ject. She gravely told him her name and put 
out her hand. For long he carried with him 
a picture of the slender presence, the delicate 
face looking wistfully into his, as if to make 
sure that this time he could be relied upon 
to depart, and the golden sunset glory seen 
through the orange boughs behind her. 

“ Good-by,’' he said, gently. “ I am sorry I 
have not moved you. Some day you will see 
that I am right, and I only hope you will not 
then too much regret that you did not follow 
my advice.” 

He pressed her hand warmly, released it, 
and walked away, down the green vista of the 
grove. 


PART II. 


I. 

It is an April day, and Venice is lying 
under a brilliant sun, which brings out all the 
beryl sheen of its translucent waterways, the 
gleam of its marvelous domes, the Byzantine 
color that still clings to the front of its palaces, 
and all the life of its picturesque and varied 
humanity.. It is the last which specially ap- 
peals to the interest of a man who has strolled 
from the Piazza San Marco into the Piazzet- 
ta, and watches the animated movement along 
the Riva de' Schiavoni, that meeting-place of 
Italy and the Orient, with eyes that take in 
every variety of the types passing before him. 
And when they grow tired of water-carriers and 
gondoliers, of soldiers and sailors, of Italians, 
Greeks, Austrians, and Orientals, they have but 
to look beyond on the fairest scene in the 
world — the wide, green plain of shining water, 


120 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


as the Grand Canal opens into the lagoon, 
the isle of San Giorgio with its cluster of pic- 
turesque buildings, and far to seaward the Ar- 
menian Convent of San Lazare. 

But the picture grows too dazzling after a 
while, and the observer, turning, walks toward 
the palace of the Doges, entered under the 
Saracenic arches into its great court, and as- 
cending the Giant's Stairway passed into those 
gorgeous saloons where the sumptuous life of 
old Venice still glows on the walls in that 
Venetian art which in glory of coloring excels 
every other school. The usual number of 
tourists, with open guide-books, were scattered 
through the apartments, filling even the dread 
chamber of the Council of Ten with their light 
chatter ; but the newcomer avoided them, lin- 
gered only in comparatively empty rooms, and 
presently wandered into the Hall of the 
Great Council, whence he passed out of an 
empty window to a balcony, where he found 
himself on a level with the top of the column 
which bears the winged lion, and overlook- 
ing from this higher elevation the same wide, 
beautiful picture of sea and sky, of glittering 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


I2I 


domes and sun-tinted campanili, which he had 
lately seen from below. 

On a seat conveniently placed in a corner 
of the balcony he sat down, and with his back 
against the stone wall of the Ducal Palace, 
with the famous lion smiling familiarly upon 
him, and with the scene of all the past glory 
and triumphs of Venice before his eyes, he 
fell easily into that waking dream which 
Venice above all places has power to produce. 
For where else is the setting of the past so 
perfectly preserved? From the gorgeous 
frescoes of Tintoretto and Paul Veronese, one 
steps forth to look on the unchanged scene — 
palaces, columns, quays, luminous sea, and 
dazzling sky — of the great events they repre- 
sent, and to ask one’s self if the stately pageants 
will not soon come forth to meet the victori- 
ous galleys laden with the spoils of the East, 
or to accompany the Doge when he goes forth 
in state to wed the Adriatic ? 

Into some such dream this man had fallen, 
when his pleasant solitude suffered an inter- 
ruption. Through the open window a figure 
suddenly stepped, and advancing to the balus- 


122 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


trade stood before him outlined against the 
horizon of sea and sky. For a moment he 
was inclined to regard with impatience this 
new object, obtruded into the foreground of 
the picture he had been contemplating with so 
much satisfaction ; then it dawned upon him 
that, so far from marring, it rather added a 
new and charming element to this picture. 
For it was the figure of a young girl, tall and 
graceful, with an indescribable beauty in the 
carriage of the small, shapely head and the 
lines of the neck and shoulders. Her attitude, 
too, was full of unconscious grace, as she stood 
gazing seaward ; and since her back was 
turned toward him, he could admire this grace 
at his leisure, together with the picturesque 
drapery of her dress, which was made of some 
fabric as soft and clinging in quality as it was 
harmonious in color. 

But presently she turned her face toward 
the great lion of St. Mark, and presented to his 
view what he instantly decided to be the loveli- 
est profile he had ever seen — a profile as clearly 
cut as that of a head on an antique cameo, but 
with a peculiarly delicate grace of its own, and 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


123 


with coloring as exquisite as the tints of a 
flower. She was smiling as she looked at the 
lion — who stonily regarded her from his pedes- 
tal — and she made such a delightful picture in 
her youth and beauty, that the man behind her 
held his breath, fearing lest some chance move- 
ment should betray his presence and cause her 
to disappear. 

But, instead of this, she was presently 
joined by another figure, that of a young man, 
who stepped through the window and walked 
up to her side with an air of easy familiarity. 

“ By J ove ! ” said the newcomer, “ I don’t 
wonder that you come out here for relief from 
those miles of pictures ! Their effect is posi- 
tively stupefying.” 

“To you, perhaps, it may be,” said the 
young lady, in a very sweet voice, with a 
slightly mocking accent. “ But it was not be- 
cause I felt stupefied that I came out, but be- 
cause the greater picture tempted me. When 
one has Venice before one’s eyes, one hardly 
cares to look at paintings.” 

“ That is exactly my opinion,” said the 
young man, “ so let us go down and get into 


124 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


a gondola and float about. That is the prin- 
cipal thing to do, besides lounging in the 
piazza.” 

“ Then suppose you go and lounge in the 
piazza,” said the young lady. “ I am very well 
satisfied where I am,” and as she spoke she 
turned again toward the railing, with the air 
of one who did not mean to stir. 

“ Oh, I am very well satisfied to stay here 
— with you,” said her companion, leaning be- 
side her. 

At this point it occurred to the unob- 
served listener behind that the time had 
come for him to retire. Solitude was charm- 
ing, and charming also was the contempla- 
tion of a single graceful figure in the fore-, 
ground of a noble picture ; but a conven- 
tional pair of young people engaged in a 
conventional flirtation was more than he could 
endure. With a sense of disgust and vexa- 
tion he rose, and entered again^the Hall of 
Council. 

Over this magnificent apartment various 
groups were scattered, some studying the fres- 
coes of battles and triumphs, others following 


A’ COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


125 


the frieze of Doges’ portraits, and pausing be- 
fore the vacant panel across which is thrown 
a black curtain and on which is painted the 
name of Marino Faliero, and the short sen- 
tence, ^'Decapitati pro criminibusl' while others 
were occupied with Tintoretto’s vast Paradiso, 
Among the latter was a pretty, fashionably 
dressed young woman, who, seated on a chair 
before the immense picture, had transferred 
her attention from it to the costumes of a pair 
of English girls, whose dresses were as ill-fit- 
ting as their complexions were blooming, and 
who appeared to be studying the great com- 
position in detail, unconscious of the critical 
glances of the animated fashion-plate behind 
them. 

This little scene attracted the notice of the 
idler from the balcony, and as he advanced, 
drawn rather by amusement than by any spe- 
cial interest oj^his own part in the Paradiso, 
the lady of tl^ chair turned her eyeglass upon 
him. A moment later she had dropped it and 
risen to her feet, exclaiming: 

“ What, Lennox — Mr. Kyrle ! ” 

Lennox Kyrle — for it was he^started and 
9 


126 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

looked at her for an instant ; then he held 
out his hand, saying, quietly : 

“ This is a very unexpected pleasure, Mrs. 
Meredith.” 

Fanny Meredith turned from white to 
red, and red to white again. His composure 
seemed to rebuke her agitation and that slip 
of the tongue — “ Lennox.” Moreover, she 
could not forget that this was the first time 
they had met since parting as lovers. But 
she recovered herself quickly, and, glancing up 
as she gave him her hand, said, a little re- 
proachfully : 

“ I knew you at once, though you have 
changed, but you were not sure of me.” 

“Yet you have not changed,” said he, 
smiling and wondering— so quick is thought ! 
— as he looked into her upturned face, where 
he had found the charm which once enslaved 
him. She had not changed, he was quite 
right about that ; but where was there inspira- 
tion for any of the rapture and agony of pas- 
sion in this blooming, piquant, commonplace 
countenance } As he held the hand which he 
had once so eagerly coveted, he thanked 


A CCMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 127 

Heaven for that old disappointment, while he 
said, “ But I could not expect to meet you 
hever 

“ As easily as I could expect to meet you,” 
she answered, “ though it is true I heard that 
you had gone to Egypt as a war correspond- 
ent. But the war has been over for some 
time.” 

“For something like half a year,” he re- 
plied; “but I have been up the Nile, and, 
had it not been for a sudden summons call- 
ing me home, I might be emulating Stanley 
in equatorial Africa now.” 

“ I should think you would rather be here,” 
said Mrs. Meredith, with a little shudder. 
“We have lately come, and I am delighted 
with Venice.” 

“ Most people are,” said Lennox ; “and by 
‘we' you mean, I presume, Mr. Meredith and 
yourself? ” 

“And the Joscelyns. We joined them 
in Paris. You know the Joscelyns? No? 
Well, at least”— with a sudden laugh and 
blush — “you remember Aimde?” 

“Aim^e ! ” he repeated, in a puzzled tone. 


128 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


Then suddenly there flashed upon him the 
memory of the old sea wall of St. Augustine, 
of the tide murmuring at his feet, of the stars 
shining overhead, and of a sweet, frightened 
voice saying, “ I am sent to tell you that 
Fanny can not come.” The name, which he 
had forgotten, brought the scene back like a 
picture, and with it also another scene — an 
orange grove at sunset, its alleys filled with 
golden light, its glistening foliage meeting like 
an arcade above, and a pair of dark eyes gaz- 
ing half-beseechingly, half-defiantly into his, 
while the same sweet voice said, “ As for me, I 
will never speak!” Remember her! How 
could he ever forget the delicate, childlike 
creature, with her unbending loyalty? His 
eyes, which time had not rendered less bril- 
liant and keen, gave a flash of recollection as 
he turned them on Mrs. Meredith, saying, 
“You mean the young cousin whom you 
sent—” 

“Yes,” she interrupted, looking around 
with a quick glance. “ Pray, be more cau- 
tious. If it were suspected, there would 
be trouble even yet. It is a great bore 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


129 


to have a jealous husband! And you know 
you are supposed to have been Aim^e’s 
lover.” 

Mr. Kyrle drew his brows together, and 
lifted a head which was not without natural 
haughtiness a little higher. He thought that 
the bad taste of this speech was only equaled 
by its impertinence. 

“ I am aware,” he said, stiffly, “ of the de- 
ception which you induced your cousin to as- 
sist you in practicing at the time of which you 
speak ; but I hardly thought it possible that 
even you could have allowed such an impres- 
sion to remain until now.” 

“You are as flattering as ever, I perceive,” 
said Fanny, coolly. “ ‘ Even you ’ — that means, 
I suppose, that you consider me bad enough 
for anything, and yet are a little surprised that 
I have been bad enough for this ! But, you 
see, if it was a matter of necessity at the time, 
it has been equally a matter of necessity ever 
since. And it did Aimde no harm ; whereas 
to have told the truth, then or later, would 
have done me great harm.” 

“ I remember that she described herself as 


130 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


of no importance,” said Kyrle, “ and it seems 
that you fully shared the opinion.” 

“ Yes,” answered Fanny, calmly, “ that was 
what we both thought, she and I, when I sent 
her on that unlucky errand. I shall never for- 
give Mr. Meredith for not going home and to 
bed like a Christian that night ! But, as it 
turned out, she was really a person of much 
importance. She inherited a great South 
American fortune, and she is now an heiress 
and beauty of the first rank.” 

“ And yet,” cried Kyrle, with the old indig- 
nation rushing over him, “you have suffered 
her to rest under — ” 

“The aspersion of having been on the 
point of eloping with you,” said Fanny, with a 
subdued, wicked laugh. “ Yes, it was a neces- 
sity of the situation, and I will say for Aim^e 
that she is the most generous creature I ever 
knew. I really can not see why you should 
look so indignant. Pray, do you think it such 
a horrible thing to have been on the point 
of eloping with you } ” 

“ I think,” he answered, haughtily, “ that it 
is a shameful injustice to allow a young girl 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


131 

to rest under the imputation of having been 
about to elope with any one when she is alto- 
gether innocent of it.” 

“We went over all that and settled it at 
the time,” said Mrs. Meredith, impatiently, 
“ and it is much too late to unsettle it now. It 
is ancient history — dead, buried, forgotten. 
Besides, no one knows anything about it ex- 
cept Mr. Meredith ; and there is surely not 
much to harm Aimde in one person's knowl- 
edge. Percy Joscelyn suspects something — 
you may remember that he found you with 
Aim^e on that awfully unlucky day — but he 
does not know anything. He will, however, 
look upon you as having been her lover, and 
the whole Joscelyn clan will be thrown into 
consternation by your appearance. They 
watch the poor child, and every man who ap- 
proaches her, like so many dragons. How 
amusing” — with another irrepressible laugh — 
“ it is that you should have turned up just 
now ! ” 

“ At the cost of depriving you of some 
amusement,” he said, coldly, “ I shall not renew 
my acquaintance with your cousin — if ac- 


132 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


quaintance it could be called. The last thing 
I am capable of is of annoying one who has 
already been the victim of such an injustice.” 

“ But why should you annoy her } ” in- 
quired Fanny — whom time had evidently not 
robbed of any of her volatile qualities — open- 
ing her eyes. “ And you don't know, really, 
what you will lose. She is charming ! Every 
one admires her immensely.” 

“ I shall not have the opportunity of do- 
ing so,” replied Kyrle, more stiffly than ever, 
for he said to himself that this woman was in- 
sufferable. “ I am leaving Venice almost im- 
mediately, and since I may not have the pleas- 
ure of seeing you again, I shall therefore bid 
you adieu — ” 

“ Not just yet,” said Fanny, with a note of 
malicious triumph in her voice. “ Here is an 
old friend to whom you must speak first. — 
Aim^e, my dear, let me recall Mr. Kyrle to 
your recollection.” 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


133 


II. 

Kyrle turned, full of anger, which changed 
in a moment by some miraculous process into 
satisfaction, for who should stand before him, 
with wondering eyes and faintly flushing 
cheeks, but the lovely lady of the balcony ! 

And she was lovelier even than he had 
imagined, with a face in which all fine issues 
of thought and feeling seemed to meet. She 
looked surprised, yet the gentle, curving lips 
smiled as it were irresistibly, while she said, 
with the composure of a woman of the world, 
“ I recollect Mr. Kyrle perfectly, though I 
should not have known him.” 

“Nor I you,” Lennox answered, bowing 
deeply. “ But I have never forgotten you.” 

It did not occur to him until after the 
words were spoken what a lover-like sound 
they might have to any one under that false 
impression which he had just resented. But 
when he lifted his head it was to meet a pair 
of eyes which at once enlightened him with 
regard to the interpretation of which they 


134 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


were susceptible. These eyes belonged to the 
young man whom he had already seen on the 
balcony, and whom Mrs. Meredith now intro- 
duced as Mr. Joscelyn. 

Percy Joscelyn had not forgotten the man 
whom he found with Aim^e on the moment- 
ous occasion when he went to announce the 
great change in her fortunes, and he instantly 
identified this bronzed stranger as that man, 
even before hearing the name which he had 
taken care to remember. It was therefore 
natural enough that his eyes should express 
suspicion and dislike when Lennox met them. 

But this immediate proof of Fanny’s asser- 
tion, that he would be regarded as “Aimde’s 
former lover,” did not irritate Kyrle as might 
have been expected. On the contrary, he was 
conscious of a sense of amusement which he 
would not have believed possible a moment 
earlier. It was the appearance of Joscelyn 
which wrought this change. A few minutes 
before he had, unconsciously to himself, envied 
this man ; now he was transformed into an ob- 
ject if not of envy, at least of apprehension to 
the latter. It was impossible not to feel that 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


135 

the situation had its elements of interest. He 
looked at the beautiful girl standing before 
him, a smile still on her lips, but her gentle, 
high-bred composure otherwise unchanged, 
and felt that, after all, the suspicion of having 
been her lover was one which he could cheer- 
fully support. 

Aim^e, on her part, regarding him with the 
deep, soft eyes he remembered well, was think- 
ing of the sea wall, the star- lighted tide, and 
the young lover who had taken his disap- 
pointment with such fiery disdain. There 
rose before her, too, a memory of the orange 
grove at sunset, and the generous anger which 
had burned there for her rather than for him- 
self. She knew well that most men in his 
place would have given scant thought at such 
a time to any one so insignificant as she had 
been, and therefore, remembering his deep con- 
cern for the false position in which she was 
placed, she had held Lennox Kyrle in grate- 
ful remembrance during all the years since 
their one day of brief acquaintance. 

Yet it was characteristic of the woman, as 
it had been characteristic of the girl, to forget 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


136 

herself for others ; and so at this moment she 
was thinking less of herself and her own sin- 
gular connection with that past story, than of 
the two before her, who had been lovers once 
and now were strangers. She was wondering 
how they felt on meeting again face to face, 
and how much or how little the memory of 
the past thrilled them. Fanny she knew too 
well to expect any depth of feeling from her ; 
but how was it with Lennox Kyrle } 

Meanwhile, amid all these memories, it 
was necessary that some one should sustain 
conversation with the usual commonplaces; 
and of this Mrs. Meredith was fortunately 
fully capable. 

“ I was never more surprised than when I 
looked up and saw Mr. Kyrle a few minutes 
ago,” she said to Aim^e. “ And yet there was 
really no reason to be surprised at all.” 

“ Not in these days, when everybody goes 
everywhere,,” said Lennox, “ and the acquaint- 
ance one parted with in Europe yesterday, 
one meets to-morrow in China. Especially a 
wanderer like myself may be met anywhere.” 

“ You are a wanderer, then .?” said Aim^e. 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


137 


“ Y es ” he answered. “ I am a person with 
whom you are intimately acquainted — ‘ our 
special correspondent,’ and therefore my duties 
take me to many places.” 

“ They have brought you to a very delight- 
ful place now,” said she. 

“ My own inclination has brought me 
here,” he replied, and as he uttered the words 
he saw a quick flash of suspicion in Percy 
Joscelyn’s eyes again. 

“ Have you been here long } ” asked Fanny. 
“ We came about a week ago ; and we are 
doing our sight-seeing so leisurely that we 
have hardly as yet seen anything at all, ex- 
cept what can be perceived from a gondola.” 

“ I arrived only a day or two ago from 
Alexandria,” answered Kyrle, “ but I am in- 
clined to think that, for a time, what one per- 
ceives from a gondola — that is, Venice herself 
— may be best of all.” 

“ It is,” said Aim^e. Upon which the 
young man beside her, speaking for the first 
time, observed : 

“It might be, if Venice were better pre- 
served ; but one grows tired of looking at so 


138 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

much decay. In fact, in my opinion, we have 
been here quite long enough.” 

“Then, my dear Percy,” said Mrs. Mere- 
dith, coolly, “ I advise you to take your depar- 
ture for any place that you like better, for we, 
who have come to Venice for a month, mean 
to stay.” 

It was not a very amiable glance which 
Mr. Joscelyn bestowed upon the speaker, but 
he did not answer save by this glance. He 
turned instead to Aim^e, and said : 

“ We seem to have lost the rest of our 
party. Shall we not go and look for them } ” 

Before Aim^e could reply to this proposal, 
the entrance of a party of four made reply un- 
necessary, for it was at once apparent that 
these were the missing persons whom it was 
proposed to seek. Yet they had the appear- 
ance themselves of seeking, rather than of 
needing to be sought, for as they entered 
they all looked around, and perceiving the 
group before the Paradiso, eagerly advanced 
toward it. 

The foremost of these newcomers was a 
tall, elaborately dressed young lady — young, at 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


139 


least by courtesy — whose commonplace pretti- 
ness was spoiled by an exceedingly artificial 
appearance and manner. With her were a 
faded, languid, elderly woman, possessing much 
natural elegance and traces of great beauty ; 
a man of about sixty, carefully got up with 
padding and hair-dye to look not more than- 
forty ; and a rotund, florid, genial man of thirty- 
five or thereabouts. As these advanced the 
young lady spoke : 

“ I thought we should never find you ! 
Where have you been hiding yourselves ? ” 

“We have been hiding ourselves where 
you see us,” replied Mrs. Meredith. “When 
I lose people, I always make a rule of quietly 
sitting down and letting them find me, instead 
of running about trying to find them. So I 
have been sitting here for half an hour in a 
conspicuous position ; and, as a reward, I have 
been found — not only by you, but by an old 
acquaintance who has most unexpectedly ap- 
peared. — Mrs. Joscelyn, let me present Mr. 
Kyrle.” 

Mr. Kyrle bowed to the elderly lady, who 
at once put up her eyeglass to examine him, 


140 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


with an alacrity which indicated that his 
name was not unknown to her. He was then 
presented to Major Joscelyn, to Miss Josce- 
lyn and to Mr. Meredith ; and he was aware 
of being regarded with more or less active 
suspicion by all of them except Miss Joscelyn, 
who smiled as graciously as women of her 
order generally do upon an apparently eligi- 
ble man. 

“ I — ah — hum — have heard of Mr. Kyrle,” 
observed Major Joscelyn, in a tone which in- 
timated that he had heard no good of Mr. 
Kyrle. Then he fixed a pair of prominent 
eyes upon the young man and inquired if he 
had been long in Venice. 

“ Only a few days,” Lennox answered, care- 
lessly. 

“Ah — a few days ! And you are leaving 
soon } ” 

“That depends altogether upon circum- 
stances,” replied Kyrle, who in fact intended 
to leave in a day or two, but had no desire to 
gratify Major Joscelyn by telling him so; for 
already he felt an animus of dislike against 
these people, not only because of their attitude 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


141 


toward himself (for that, being the result of 
misconception, only amused him), but from 
their appearance and manner. “ They are self- 
seeking and insincere,” was his judgment, as 
his glance passed rapidly from face to face ; 
and then, turning to the lovely, candid coun- 
tenance of Aim^e, he thought, “ She is like a 
dove among hawks.” 

Major Joscelyn giving no other reply to 
his last remark than a disapproving “Hem!” 
Miss Joscelyn took up the conversation, and 
remarked that Mr. Kyrle probably found Ven- 
ice attractive. 

“Very attractive — especially within the last 
half hour,” he replied, with deliberate malice. 

The Jocelyns looked at each other, while 
Mr. Meredith glanced at his wife, and the lat- 
ter said, quickly : 

“ Of course, it has become more attractive 
within the last half hour. What is pleasanter 
than meeting old friends unexpectedly 7 Mr. 
Kyrle is on his way to America from Egypt,” 
she added in general explanation, “and it is 
the merest chance that we should have met 
him.” 


10 


142 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


No one remarked that it was a fortunate 
chance. On the contrary, silence appeared to 
indicate an altogether different opinion. After a 
moment, Major Joscelyn observed that they 
had probably seen enough of the Palace of 
the Doges for one morning, and that it was 
time to think of returning to the hotel. 

There was a general movement, and it is 
likely that Lennox wo aid have taken a final 
farewell of the party there and then, had not 
Aim^e turned to him with a smile sweet 
enough to atone for any degree of incivility 
on the part of the others, saying, “ And have 
you, too, had enough of the Ducal Palace } ” 

“ For the present,” he answered ; and avail- 
ing himself of what seemed a tacit permission, 
he walked by her side as the party passed from 
the great hall, along corridors and down stair- 
cases to the court below. 

Those few minutes completed the impres- 
sion which she had already made upon him ; 
and an impression in which her beauty played 
a small part in comparison with the gracious 
simplicity of her manner and the charm of her 
voice and glance. There was much in this 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


143 


voice and glance to remind him of the girl 
who had carried Fanny Berrien’s message to 
him, who had so timidly offered him her sym- 
pathy and compassion, and who had sat by his 
side under the orange boughs. Yet, save in 
the dark sweetness of the eyes and the gentle 
cadence of the tones, there was surely little in 
common between that frightened child and 
this stately young lady. 

If he had only known it, however, there 
was the great thing in common that she was 
offering him now, the same sympathy that she 
had offered then. She was too young, and of 
too limited experience, to have learned the 
power of change which lies in time, and it 
seemed to her that he must inevitably be 
deeply moved by such an unexpected meeting 
with the woman he had once loved ; and her 
gentle kindness was the involuntary form in 
which she expressed this feeling. But natu- 
rally no one could be aware of this — not even 
Kyrle himself. He thought that she simply 
meant to atone for the incivility of her friends ; 
the latter cast alarmed glances upon one an- 
other; and Fanny Meredith was no nearer 


144 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT, 


the truth than any one else, in saying to her- 
self : “ Aim^e is certainly the best creature in 
the world ! She is throwing herself into the 
breach to prevent Tom from being jealous.” 

When they reached the Piazza there was a 
slight pause of the party, and Kyrle felt that 
he was expected to take leave. “ Since I have 
been so fortunate this morning, I hope to be 
fortunate again,” he said to Aimde in clearly 
audible tones. “ I shall trust to have the 
pleasure of meeting you again.” 

“ Oh, no doubt,” answered she, readily. 
“ People who know each other can not pos- 
sibly fail to meet in Venice. But will you 
not come to see us? We are at the Grand 
Hotel. — Fanny, surely you mean to ask Mr. 
Kyrle to come to see you ? ” 

“ Mr. Kyrle knows that I shall be de- 
lighted to see him,” replied Mrs. Meredith, 
“ but really we are at home so seldom that it 
hardly seems worth while to ask him to come. 
As you have just observed, people must meet 
when they are in Venice; and their best 
chance to meet is away from home, rather 
than at home. Nevertheless, I hope you will 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


145 

take the chance of finding us in,” said she, 
to Kyrle. 

I shall prefer to take the chance of find- 
ing you elsewhere, since you are more likely 
to be abroad,” replied he. 

“ And elsewhere is so much pleasanter 
than at home,” interposed Miss Joscelyn. 
“ The Belle Arti, now — have you been to the 
Belle Arti, Mr. Kyrle ? ” 

Mr. Kyrle replied that he had not. “ I 
have not been sight-seeing since my arrival,” 
he said, “ but only lounging.” 

“ Oh, but you must certainly see the Belle 
Arti,” said the young lady with animation. 
“You can have no idea of the Venetian 
school of art until you have studied it 
there.” 

“ I have no doubt Mr. Kyrle is aware of 
that, Lydia,” said Fanny Meredith, dryly ; “ but 
since we have exhaustively done the Belle 
Arti — at least I hope we are done with it — 
he is not likely to meet us there, and it was 
of meeting us that he was speaking.” 

“ It was certainly of meeting you that I 
was thinking,” said Lennox. 


146 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


“ Hum — ah ! ” said the major, addressing 
his party, “ shall we move on ? ” 

Kyrle watched them with a smile as they 
moved away across the sunshiny square. He 
was saying to himself that it would go hard 
with him if he did not see again the beauti- 
ful eyes he had been looking into, and hear the 
sweet voice which had just bidden him such a 
kindly adieu. 


III. 

It was no later than the evening of the 
same day before he met the party again. He 
was idly sauntering around the arcades of the 
Piazza, brilliant with lights and filled with the 
sound of many tongues, when he heard a voice 
say, “ Oh, there is Mr. Kyrle !” and turning, he 
encountered Fanny Meredith^s bright glance. 
She was sitting at one of the tables near the 
door of a ca/^, with Aim^e, Mr. Meredith, and 
young Joscelyn, taking coffee and ices, and as 
Lennox paused she went on, gayly : 

“Come and join us. You look lonely, and 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


147 


we are stupid. We know each other so well 
that each knows exactly what the other will 
say ; so, like PuncJis married lovers during 
the honeymoon, we are ready to welcome a 
friend, or even an enemy, so he prove enter- 
taining.’' 

“ But how if one should not prove enter- 
taining asked Kyrle, who needed no sec- 
ond bidding to take a vacant chair by her 
side. 

“ Then you must have made very poor use 
of your opportunities,” said she, “ and changed 
very much besides — must he not, Aim^e.^” 

This was audacious, Kyrle thought ; but 
glancing at Aim^e, he was reassured by her 
smile. ^ 

“ When I knew Mr. Kyrle, I was not very 
well able to judge of his powers of entertain- 
ment,” she said, “ though I have no doubt 
they were great.” 

“ On the contrary, they have always been 
of a very limited order,” said Kyrle. “ I am 
immensely flattered, however, by Mrs. Mere- 
dith’s kind recollection, and only regret my 
inability to justify it.” 


148 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


“ You have at least improved in modesty,” 
said Mrs. Meredith. 

“A man who has been in the desert six 
months should be modest when he returns 
to civilization,” he answered. “ Perhaps it is 
because I have been in the desert,” he added, 
looking around, “that it seems to me one 
hardly needs better entertainment than this 
scene.” 

“ It is very bright and interesting for a 
while,” said Mr. Meredith ; “ but fancy com- 
ing here every evening of your life, as these 
Venetians do! One would think that it 
would grow monotonous in time.” 

“To a stranger it would certainly grow 
monotonous in a short time,” said Kyrle ; 
“ but those who have all their interests, social 
or otherwise, here, and who have a strong 
attachment to this which has been the frame 
of their life from its beginning, and the frame 
of the life of Venice through all her history, 
are not likely to grow weary of it.” 

“ I think,” said Aim^e, “ that even a 
stranger might require some time to grow 
weary of it — such a picture in such a frame 1 ” 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


149 


“That would depend entirely upon the 
stranger,” said Lennox, regarding her with a 
smile. 

And indeed she was herself a picture worth 
regarding as she sat in the light of the bril- 
liant lamps ; her fair, delicate face shadowed by 
a large hat covered with curling plumes, and 
her liquid eyes full of pleasure as she looked 
over the gay life of the Piazza, or turned to 
the solemn front of the great cathedral lifting 
its domes and minarets against a sky of hya- 
cinth blue. 

“It is a very pretty scene,” said Percy 
Joscelyn, superciliously, “ but I think it quite 
possible to grow tired of it. There is so much 
sameness. Now, the boulevards — ” 

“ Percy is a very good American ; his idea 
of heaven is a Paris boulevard,” said Fanny 
Meredith. “ I am fond of the boulevards 
myself, but, for a change, I call this delight- 
ful.” 

Lennox agreed with her. He did not ask 
himself why it was so delightful, but he felt 
a sense of thorough and complete satisfaction, 
as he sat, joining in the light, idle conver- 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


150 

sation, commenting on the motley throng 
which ebbed and flowed around them, and 
drinking a cup of black coffee as if it were 
nectar. 

Presently Mr. Meredith suggested a return 
to their hotel, but this was at once negatived 
by his lively wife. “ The moon is well up by 
this time,” she said. “ Let us go out in a gon- 
dola. It will be charming to float about for 
an hour or so.” 

“ Good Heaven ! ” said the husband, “ have 
you not been floating about enough during 
the course of the day ? It seems to me that 
we hardly exist out of a gondola, unless we 
are in a church or a picture gallery.” 

“ Well, then, you need not come,” said she, 
laughing ; “ but I know Aimde would like to 
go — would you not, Aim^e ? ” 

“ I am always ready for a gondola,” was 
the smiling reply. 

“ Percy will go. He is always ready for 
a gondola too,” pursued Fanny. Then she 
turned to Kyrle. “ Will you join us ? ” she 
asked. 

“ I shall be delighted,” he replied, trying 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


151 

not to make the commonplace words too 
eager. 

“ Then we are a nice partie carrde, and we 
will go at once,” said she, rising and taking 
a shawl from the back of her chair. 

No one inquired how far Mr. Meredith 
approved of the arrangement. He was left 
smoking a cigar in front of the cafdy while the 
partie carrde proceeded to the Riva in search 
of a gondola. 

As was to be expected, Percy took posses- 
sion of Aimde, while Lennox found himself 
walking by the side of his old love. Neither 
of them spoke for a minute or two; then 
Fanny turned and glanced at him with a mis- 
chievous smile. 

“Time has its recompenses as well as its 
revenges occasionally,” she said. “Are you 
meditating on that ? ” 

He looked at her and was forced to return 
her smile. “ You are as full of diablerie as 
ever,” he said, “ but if you have no sense of 
compassion, have you not any compunction ” 

“ Compassion ! — compunction ! What fine, 
large words! But why should I have either?” 


152 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


she asked. “You do not need compassion, I 
am sure ; and as for compunction — you could 
not expect me to be sorry now ? ” 

“ Certainly not,” he answered, with alacrity. 
“ Regret for what has resulted so well would 
be entirely out of place — for you, that is. For 
me, however — 

“Are you trying to insinuate that you 
have any regret?” said she, with a laugh. 
“ Ah, that pretense is shallow ! I have had 
such long experience that I can tell, the mo- 
ment that I look into a man’s eyes, whether 
he feels the smallest bit of sentiment ; and you 
— as far as I am concerned — ^you have not 
enough to put on the point of a pin ! Do 
you think it strange of me to talk in this 
way?” — He did think so, and his face no 
doubt betrayed as much. “ But I have a rea- 
son. I want you to understand that I am 
not under any foolish delusion about you, as 
some women would be. I am anxious that 
you should trust me, and let me be your 
friend.” 

“ Pray believe that I trust you entirely,” 
said Lennox — who did not trust her at all. 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


153 


But a friend — I am much honored ; yet I do 
not know that I have special need of a friend 
at present.” 

“You will never have greater need,” said 
she, emphatically, “ for you have fallen in love 
with Aimee, and, unless I am your friend, the 
Joscelyns will not suffer you even to speak to 
her.” 

“ I can well believe that,” said he, involun- 
tarily. Then he paused and laughed. “ But 
have I fallen in love with the young lady 
whose name is so suggestive of that emo- 
tion } ” he asked. 

“ Y ou are the person to answer the ques- 
tion,” replied Fanny ; “ but I should say there 
was no doubt of it. I have been watching 
you for the last hour, and the entire scheme 
has matured beautifully in my mind.” 

He looked at her again — curious, inter- 
ested, uncertain what to make of her. The 
pretty, piquant face he had once known so 
well, was full of animation and amusement as 
she turned it toward him, meeting his puzzled 
glance. 

“You are ungrateful,” she said; “ you do 


154 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


not trust me ; and yet I am anxious to do you 
a great service.” 

“ Granting that I need a service,” said he, 
“forgive me if I ask — why should you wish 
to do it 1 ” 

“ Now, that is more than ungrateful,” said 
she. “ It is giving me credit for no fine feel- 
ing at all. Though I jest, do you think I do 
not remember how badly I treated you once 
It is all over now — and no doubt you are 
grateful enough that it is so. But still the fact 
remains. I did treat you badly, and I should 
like to be able to feel that I had made some 
amend for it. So much for you. Now for 
Aim^e” — her voice changed slightly. “Well, 
I owe a great deal to Aim^e, and I would do 
a great deal for her. When it was a question 
of serving me, she did not think of herself at 
all ; and, though I may be frivolous and shal- 
low, I do not forget this.” 

“ She certainly did not think of herself at 
all,” Kyrle agreed — looking at the graceful fig- 
ure moving in front of them, and remember- 
ing the sea wall of St. Augustine. 

“ I always said I would repay her if I 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


155 


could,” Fanny went on, “ and I do not think I 
can repay her better than by rescuing her from 
the hands that have possession of her now, and 
saving her from marrying Percy Joscelyn.” 

The last shot struck home. Kyrle was 
himself astonished at the sense of consterna- 
tion with which he started. “Is that thought 
of ? ” he asked. 

“ They think of it,” Fanny replied. “ They 
are ready to move heaven and earth to ac- 
complish it ; but ” — the tone of gleeful malice 
which he had heard before came into her 
voice — “ I think we may defeat them, you and 
I, if you will say the word.” 

“What word is it that you wish me to 
say 1 ” he asked. 

She looked up into his face again with 
bright eyes. “ What word can it be,” she re- 
plied, “except the simple assertion that you 
wish to marry Aimee 1 ” 

Fortunately for Kyrle, he had no oppor- 
tunity to answer at the moment. They had by 
this time reached the Riva, and Joscelyn, turn- 
ing, said, “ Here is a gondola.” 

A few minutes later they were afloat on 


156 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

the broad expanse of moonlight-flooded water, 
with Venice — marvelous, mystical, beautiful — 
lying around them. The cabin had been re- 
moved from the gondola, and the ladies took 
the two cushioned seats, while the young men 
threw themselves down at their feet. And so 
they glided out into the silver night. 

Surely it was an hour worth living for! 
The brilliant lights from the quays streamed 
over the water and were reflected in the still 
depths below, like an enchanted city; but 
this illumination paled before the splendor of 
the moonlight that reigned supreme, making 
all things visible, yet veiling every defect of 
time, for other defects in Venice there are 
none. Under this magic light the “glorious 
city of the sea ” has all her ancient glory still ; 
one sees no longer the decay which has fallen 
over her palaces, but only the loveliness which 
made her the wonder of the world. Past 
islands, palaces, and domed churches they 
glided with that smooth, noiseless movement 
which is half the charm of a gondola, and 
were soon on the broad lagoon, where the 
booming of the Adriatic surf upon the Lido 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


157 

came to their ears like distant thunder — the 
only sound which broke the silence around 
them. 

The others talked, but Aimde said little. 
She leaned back on the broad, easy seat, and 
the white radiance falling over her seemed to 
intensify all that was spiritual in her beauty, 
until she looked rather like a fair dream of a 
woman than a creature of flesh and blood. 
Lennox pulled his hat low over his eyes in 
order that he might watch her unobserved. 
His blood was still bounding from that sug- 
gestion of Fanny Meredith’s before they en- 
tered the boat. It had taken away his breath, 
yet he felt as if in some intangible way it had 
drawn him nearer to this exquisite creature. 
It seemed to make that a possibility of which 
he had not ventured to dream ; and as he 
watched the lovely face he was ready to utter 
with emphasis the word desired. Here on the 
shining water, with the moon beloved of lovers 
in all ages looking down, he felt his youth re- 
awakening with a sense of power and resolve. 
He did not think of difficulties or doubts ; he 
only yielded himself to the strange, sweet en- 

IT 


158 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

chantment which had so unexpectedly over- 
whelmed him. 

Presently Fanny looked at him curiously, 
“Why have you grown so silent?” she asked. 
“ Y ou and Aimee are not the most lively com- 
panions one might choose.” 

“Lively!” repeated Lennox. “If you 
wanted liveliness, you should have remained 
on the Piazza. This is not the place for it.” 

“It seems to me that all places are the 
better for it,” said she ; “ but perhaps that is 
because I am a Philistine. However, since 
you don't think this a place for liveliness, sup- 
pose you sing something. It is certainly a 
place for music, and we have left all the musi- 
cians behind.” 

They had indeed left those gondolas full of 
singers, which haunt the Grand Canal and 
hover around the hotels of Venice, far behind, 
and were floating in the silence of the lustrous 
night near San Lazare. Lennox hesitated 
and looked at Aim^e, who turned her glance 
on him. 

“ Do you sing ?” she asked. 

“Sing?” repeated Fanny. “He used to 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


159 


sing divinely ! “ I suppose he has not forgot- 

ten that in the desert.” 

“ Oh, no,” said Lennox, with a laugh. “ I 
have floated on the Nile and sung to myself 
many a night.” 

“ Sing to us now, then, will you not ? ” said 
Aimde. 

There was no insistence in her tone, only 
a courteous request ; but he complied imme- 
diately, as he would no doubt have complied 
had she asked him to take a plunge into the 
sea. Nor did he require more than an instant 
to decide what he would sing. As he watched 
her uplifted face with the moonbeams falling 
on it, he had been thinking of a song of 
Heine’s, and the music — Schumann’s music 
— was in his throat, as it were; so he be- 
gan at once : 

‘‘ The lotus flower feareth 
The splendor of the sun ; 

Bowing her head and dreaming, 

She waits till the day is done. 

“ The moon he is her lover ; 

He wakes her with silvery light ; 

To him unveils she, smiling, 

Her flower-face pure and white. 


i6o 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


She gazeth on high in silence, 

Doth bloom and gleam and glow, 

Exhaling and weeping and trembling 
For love and love’s deep woe.” 

He sang “ divinely,” as Fanny had said, for 
Nature had given him a voice of the finest 
order — a pure, melodious tenor — and, though 
it had never received much training, there was 
something in it to-night which took the place 
of training and made it unnecessary — a thrill 
of emotion, a depth of expression, which art 
can never teach. When the full, soft notes 
sank over the last cadence, Fanny cried out 
with admiration, and even Mr. Joscelyn con- 
descended to say, “ Bravo ! ” 

But Aimee did not speak at once, and it 
was only when Lennox looked into her “ flow- 
er-face pure and white,” that she said, “You 
have a great gift, Mr. Kyrle, and a great power 
to bestow pleasure.” 

The words were kind, but what was there 
in the voice that seemed to Kyrle’s ear like a 
touch of frost ? The exaltation of his mood 
sank under it, and he suddenly seemed in his 
own eyes to wear very much the aspect of a 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. i6i 

fool. What had he been doing ? Singing 
out his heart to unsympathetic ears, led away 
by the magic of the night and the fairness of a 
face which, after all, was the face of a stranger, 
or, worse yet, of one who knew him only as 
the lover of Fanny Meredith. What had pos- 
sessed him to take leave of his senses in this 
manner? Was this what was likely to happen 
to a man when he came out of the desert and 
found himself in unaccustomed contact with 
civilization again ? Did the first lovely face 
on which he looked lead his senses astray ? 

But even as he scornfully asked the ques- 
tion he knew that it was not so ; that the spell 
of this face had its root deep in the past, in that 
golden evening when he sat under the orange 
trees and tried in vain to shake the grateful 
loyalty of a child. He knew now that he had 
never forgotten that child, and the deep im- 
pression which her absolute unselfishness had 
made on him, an impression deeper because it 
had been contrasted with such utter selfishness 
on the part of another. He had seemed to 
come very near to that little maiden of the 
past in the hour when her nature and her heart 


i62 a comedy of elopement. 

had been, as it were, laid bare before him ; and 
so it was to no stranger that he had so quick- 
ly surrendered his own heart, which had long 
been swept and garnished and empty of any 
occupant. 

Meanwhile Mrs. Meredith was clamoring 
for another song. “ Y ou are surely not going 
to stop with one!” she cried. “We want an- 
other, and yet another — don’t we, Aim^e } ” 

“Just as many as Mr. Kyrle will give us,” 
responded Aim^e, smiling. 

It was easier to sing than to talk ; so Kyrle 
again lifted his voice, this time in a Spanish 
serenade as full of the spirit of passionate ro- 
mance as a Spanish night. But something 
had gone from the singer’s voice, and, charm- 
ing as was the song, no one was moved and 
thrilled as by the first. 


IV. 

Fanny Meredith was right in saying that 
the Joscelyns watched Aim^e and every man 
who approached her like dragons. And from 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 163 

their point of view, this was natural enough. 
Had not Aimde’s fortune lifted them out of 
poverty and the embarrassments resulting 
therefrom, to a condition of affluence where 
all things became easy and agreeable } And 
could they be expected to surrender the ad- 
vantages of this fortune without a struggle 
It was true that they had enjoyed these advan- 
tages for five or six years, in which time Ma- 
jor Joscelyn, through whose hands the income 
passed, had made not a few excellent invest- 
ments on his own account ; and that Aimee, 
as soon as she attained her majority, had 
settled an independence on her mother. Yet 
these things did not make them one whit 
more inclined to surrender any part of the 
heritage which they had grown to consider 
their own. Since it was, however, undeniable 
that Aimee, although the most gentle and 
yielding of human beings, had certain rights 
in her own property which the law would 
secure to her, and which a husband, should 
she marry, might be brutal enough to claim 
in her behalf, it became necessary that she 
should marry some one who could be trusted 


164 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

to consider the Joscelyri interest of primary 
importance ; and this could only be one of 
the Joscelyns themselves. It was therefore 
early decreed in the family councils that Percy 
Joscelyn should in time marry the young 
heiress. There had been considerable conster- 
nation when he returned with her from St. 
Augustine and reported a mysterious lover 
already on the horizon ; especially since in- 
quiries drew no information concerning this 
person from Aimee. “He was a gentleman 
whom I knew,” she said, and not even her 
mother could obtain from her anything more. 

Then Major Joscelyn solemnly announced 
that any such thing as a probable or possible 
love affair must be promptly nipped in the 
bud, and that the quickest and most complete 
way to accomplish this was to take the girl 
abroad. Her education, which up to this time 
had been of the most desultory order, furnished 
a good plea, and the entire Joscelyn family 
conveyed themselves at once to foreign fields. 
They had never returned to America. Noth- 
ing would have been easier than to place 
Aim^e in a French or German school, where 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 165 

she would not have required the attention of 
her entire family ; but that would not have 
given an excuse for a residence in Paris, which 
they all found very agreeable. So a handsome 
establishment was mounted, and after its ex- 
penses were paid, besides the investments on 
the major's account already mentioned, there 
was not a great deal to spare for Aim^e's 
education. Expensive masters, therefore, she 
never had ; but very good though not fashion- 
able teachers can be obtained in Paris for low 
prices, and it was not in Aim^e's nature to 
make any demands for herself. She took 
eager advantage of the scant opportunities 
allowed her, and accomplished an education 
for which she had little to thank her guard- 
ians. 

There was some uneasiness in the family 
mind when the time of her majority ap- 
proached ; but it passed quietly, and, whether 
through indifference, or ignorance of the full 
extent of her power, she made no attempt to 
take the control of her income from Major 
Joscelyn's hands. So things had gone on as 
usual, and the family were hoping that before 


i66 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


very long Percy might come into possession of 
the much-coveted fortune, when who should 
appear on the scene but Fanny Meredith ! 
At once the Joscelyns felt that the time had 
come when they would have to fight for 
Aimee. They no longer had legal control 
of her movements ; and although she still 
yielded submission to the wishes of her moth- 
er (which meant the wishes of Major Josce- 
lyn), they instinctively felt that it would not 
do to try this submissiveness too far. So, 
when Mrs. Meredith proposed that Aimde 
should join her husband and herself in a tour 
through Italy, the Joscelyns held a council of 
war, and decided that, while it was impossible 
to allow her to go, it was equally unadvisable 
to strain obedience too far. The brilliant 
mind of Major Joscelyn again found the rem- 
edy. “ VVe will all go,” he said. “It is not — 
ahem ! — what one would desire, to wander 
about Italian cities for several months; but 
Aimde can not be trusted with this flighty 
woman, who would not only introduce all 
manner of— hum — dangerous acquaintances to 
her, but who would delight to undermine our 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


167 


influence. Neither will it do to positively 
refuse to let her go ; s.o we must sacrifice our- 
selves and accompany her.” 

The sacrifice, therefore, to Fanny Mere- 
dith’s great disgust, was made. The family 
picked themselves up, and in solid phalanx ac- 
companied their heiress to Italy, keeping vigi- 
lant watch and ward over her and over every 
possible dangerous acquaintance whom she 
made. But they were little prepared for the 
unkind stroke of Fate which brought Lennox 
Kyrle across their path. That his appearance 
in Venice was an accident they did not be- 
lieve for an instant. They strongly suspected 
that Fanny Meredith had, together with him, 
planned this appearance to take place when 
Aim^e should have been removed from her 
family environment. They congratulated them- 
selves that so much, at least, had been frus- 
trated by their foreseeing vigilance, but they 
had not the least doubt that Kyrle had come 
with the determination to secure her hand and 
fortune, if that desirable end could be attained 
by unholy arts and incredible audacity. What 
was to be done to frustrate and check this au- 


l68 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

dacity ? Such was the question the family met 
in solemn conclave to consider on the day after 
the undesirable intruder had appeared. 

“ He is not to be shaken ofT easily,” said 
Percy Joscelyn, “for Mrs. Meredith encour- 
ages him in every way. Last night she not 
only invited him to join us as we sat outside 
Florian^s, but she proposed going out in a 
gondola, took him along, and made him sing. 
He sings uncommonly well — confound him ! 
— and almost made love to Aimde before my 
eyes.” 

“ The fellow’s impudence seems to be equal 
to anything ! ” said the major. “ And how did 
Aim^e receive his — ah — advances } ” 

“You can never tell much about Aimde,” 
his son answered. “ She is quiet, and she’s 
deep. She didn’t seem responsive, but that 
signifies nothing. Under ordinary circum- 
stances I might think that he had made no 
impression on her ; but these are not ordinary 
circumstances, and the trouble is that we don’t 
know what the extent of their first acquaint- 
ance was. Although Mrs. Berrien denied it, I 
shall always believe that there had been some 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 169 

love-making going on between them in St. 
Augustine.’' 

“ And yet Aim^e was certainly not very at- 
tractive at that time,” observed Miss Joscelyn. 

“ There’s no accounting for tastes,” said her 
brother, curtly, “and facts are facts. I saw 
him give her a locket — something which, you 
know, she always declined to explain.” 

“ Yes,” said Mrs. Joscelyn, with a sigh, “she 
was very obstinate and as close as wax. But I 
have always had an idea that he was not a 
lover, because, in the first place, she said so — 
and Aimee always told the truth — and, in the 
second place, because she never seemed to 
have any fancy for lovers, like other girls. — 
You know, Lydia, how often you have re- 
marked that Aim^e was so old-fashioned in this 
respect.” 

“ Yes,” assented Lydia, “ but, as Percy says, 
Aimee is deep, and I don’t really feel that I 
know very much about her. As for the matter 
of the locket, though,” added the speaker with 
a sudden gleam of intuition, “ that was as like- 
ly as not one of Fanny Meredith’s tricks. She 
was an outrageous flirt ! ” 


170 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


“If I thought so!” exclaimed Percy Jos- 
celyn, with a start. His eyes flashed as he 
spoke. Many a score had he to pay Fanny 
Meredith, who in truth took a malicious pleas- 
ure in frustrating his attempts to establish a 
claim upon Aim^e ; and if it were possible to 
bring anything out of the past against her, 
how delighted he would be to use it remorse- 
lessly ! “ But there is not the least proof of 

such a thing,” he said, almost resentfully, to his 
sister. 

“ No ; it was only an idea that occurred to 
me,” she replied; “but I know what Fanny 
Berrien was, and I believe that, if you could 
induce Aim^e to speak, you would find that 
it was so.” 

“Then, in that case,” said the major, “you 
don’t believe the man was Aim^e’s lover at 
all.^>” 

“ It does not matter what she believes,” 
Percy somewhat rudely interposed. “ Opin- 
ions, without any ground of proof, amount to 
nothing. I know what I saw, and I know 
that the fellow has eyes only for Aim^e now ; 
and that Mrs. Meredith, as I hav^e already 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. lyi 

said, encourages him by every means in her 
power.” 

“ Then,” said the major, sharply, “ one thing 
is certain : Aim^e can not be allowed to go 
out with the Merediths.” 

“ How will you prevent it?” Percy asked. 
“The last thing advisable is to force her to 
declare her independence of us, and any ill- 
judged attempt at control would do this. 
Nothing would please Mrs. Meredith better 
than to prompt her to such a course. No; 
watchfulness is our only resource — watchful- 
ness, and perhaps stratagem. If it were pos- 
sible to leave Venice now — ” 

“ That would be the best thing,” said the 
major, “only — ah — what is to prevent this 
objectionable person from following us ? ” 

“ If that were all,” said Percy, “ I should 
leave at once, and trust to luck or the short- 
ness of his purse to prevent his following. 
But the real objection is that we could not be 
certain that Aim^e would consent to go ; and 
we could neither force her to do so nor leave 
her with the Merediths. So, departure is not 
to be thought of We must fight the thing 


172 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


out by watchfulness and stratagem, as I have 
said.” 

“Watchfulness — ^yes,” said his father, “that 
is plain, and of course necessary; but what 
stratagem do you propose ? ” 

“ I propose, for one thing, that some per- 
son shall always take charge of Mr. Kyrle, and 
prevent him from devoting himself to Aimee.” 

“ But how is any one to take charge of 
Mr. Kyrle — without his consent } ” asked Mrs. 
Joscelyn, feebly. 

“ A man’s consent is always taken for 
granted where a lady is concerned,” young 
Joscelyn answered. “ Lydia, here, might be 
equal to the delicate task, I think. All that is 
required is that she shall quietly take posses- 
sion of Mr. Kyrle on all occasions, and make 
it impossible for him to attach himself to 
Aimde. — It is a task after your own heart,” he 
went on, addressing his sister with more than - 
the suspicion of a brotherly sneer in his tone 
“ I have seen you on many occasions monopo- 
lize men very much against their will. Do you 
think you can manage the same thing with 
Kyrle.?” 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


173 

A flush rose to her cheek and was visible 
through the powder that covered it. “ Y ou 
are as insulting as usual/' she said. 

“ On the contrary, I am most flattering,” 
he returned, suavely — for he felt that Lydia’s 
assistance was essential at this juncture of 
affairs. “ Only a woman of rare powers can do 
these things. A stupid woman or a clumsy 
woman can never succeed in them. It re- 
quires a peculiar tact to take possession of a 
man and keep him fastened to your side 
whether he likes or not.” 

“ I understand perfectly all that you mean 
to imply,” she said, coldly ; “ and if I do this 
thing it is not out of regard for you or your 
plans, but because I have an object of my own 
in it.” 

“ Whatever your object,” her brother re- 
plied, *' only do the thing, and I shall be satis- 
fied, and never doubt your powers again.” 


12 


174 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


V. 

But while the family council was thus 
laying plans for keeping Aimee and her old 
acquaintance apart, Fortune, which sometimes 
takes up weapons and fights for those who 
have neither heart nor power to fight for 
themselves, had most unexpectedly brought 
them together. 

It was quite early in the morning, soon 
after he had taken that light collation which 
on the Continent is called the first breakfast, 
that Kyrle, sauntering on the Piazza and ask- 
ing himself whether he should fulfill his engage- 
ment of calling on Mrs. Meredith, or whether 
he should, more sensibly, leave Venice, these 
old entanglements, and new perils, behind him, 
suddenly perceived a lady, accompanied by 
her maid, just entering the great portal of the 
cathedral. He had not sat behind that figure 
the day before and studied it in vain. He 
recognized at once the elegant outlines, the 
graceful carriage, and without a moment’s hesi- 
tation he followed her into the church, as he 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


175 

had long ago followed her into the Florida 
orange grove. 

Who does not know by sight or by fame 
that wonderful interior in whose darkness lies 
hid the spoils of the Orient, and whose an- 
cient pavement in its undulations seems to 
imitate the waves of the sea that cradles it? 
Kyrle knew it well ; but just now he was not 
thinking of gorgeous mosaics, or marvelous 
carving, of columns of verd-antique, jasper, or 
porphyry ; his eyes were searching the gloom 
of the vast edifice for the figure which had 
entered a few minutes before, and some time 
elapsed before he discovered what he sought, 
in a chapel where a priest was saying mass 
and a small congregation were assembled. 

As he drew near the chapel, struck by the 
infinitely picturesque scene — the rich, jewel- 
incrusted altar, the priest in his golden vest- 
ments, the contrasts of rank and costume in 
the forms kneeling on the pavement — he sud-: 
denly saw Aim^e, her maid on one side, on 
the other a Venetian girl with a black lace 
shawl thrown over such red-gold hair as Ti- 
tian painted, while a shaft of sunlight from 


176 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

some high, remote window brought out the 
delicate fairness of her face from the shadowy 
obscurity around. Satisfied with having found 
the object of his search, Kyrle paused, and, lean- 
ing against a pillar, waited until the service 
was over and those who had assisted thereat 
were dispersing. Then he stepped from the 
shadow of the pillar and presented himself to 
Aim^e. She looked a little surprised, but 
greeted him quietly, and together they walked 
toward the entrance. 

“ I was about to remark that I am fortu- 
nate to meet you,” Kyrle said presently, “ but 
one should pay a sacred edifice the compliment 
of being strictly truthful while within its walls, 
shouldn’t one 7 And the truth in this case is 
that I saw you come in and followed you. 
I am thinking of leaving Venice to-day.” 

If he had intended to surprise her by the 
announcement, he must have been disappoint- 
ed by the calmness with which she replied : 
“You are leaving Venice to-day Is not 
that sooner than you anticipated ?” 

“ I had made no plans,” he answered. 
“When I paused here, I did not intend to 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


177 


linger more than a few days. And now, 
though I am strongly tempted to remain, I — 
Well, I think I had better go.” 

Almost every one has had occasion to learn 
more than once in life the extreme difficulty 
of keeping all trace of strong feeling out of 
the voice. Kyrle was conscious of being some- 
what exasperated with himself and Fate, as 
he uttered the last words, and naturally the 
inflection of his tone betrayed the feeling. 
Aimde glanced at him quickly — involuntarily, 
it appeared — and in the light of that glance 
there suddenly flashed upon him an under- 
standing of what interpretation she might give 
to his words. Her eyes seemed to say, “ Ah, 
is that it I ” But before he could collect his 
thoughts sufficiently to know how to explain 
himself, she had looked away again and was 
saying in her clear, low voice : If you think 
it best, of course you are right to go. And 
one should not attempt to change your reso- 
lution.” 

“No one is likely to attempt to change it,” 
he replied, with a slight laugh. “ But I think 
you misunderstand me a little,” he added, 


178 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

after a pause, with a sudden impulse of can- 
dor. “We were once thrown together very 
singularly ; I am sure you do not forget this 
any more than I do. Therefore, since we are 
not strangers, will you let me speak to you 
frankly ? " 

“ Surely, if you wish to do so,” she an- 
swered ; but he saw that she looked a little 
startled. 

“ Do not be afraid,” he said, quietly. “ I 
have no intention of saying anything that you 
need hesitate to hear. But may I ask you to 
sit down for a moment ? ” 

They were now in the atriu7n, or inner 
porch of the church. Aim^e hesitated for an 
instant, then, turning to her maid, said in 
French : 

“ Go to the Merceria and make the pur- 
chases of which you spoke. I will wait for 
you here.” 

“ Oui, mademoiselle,” replied the girl, with- 
out the change of a feature, and forthwith de- 
parted. 

Kyrle could hardly believe his good for- 
tune, but as Aim^e sat down on one of the 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


179 


Stone benches fixed against the wall, he said, 
gratefully : 

“You are very kind — as kind as I remem- 
ber you of old. And I have no more forgot- 
ten how kind you were then, than I have 
ceased to thank Heaven for the message you 
so bravely brought me.” 

She looked up at him and he saw in her 
face that she was astonished. 

“ But — ” she began, and then paused. 

“ But you thought that I meant something 
else a minute ago,” he said. “You thought I 
meant that I found it best to go because I 
felt the old attraction reviving. Is it not so .?” 

She dropped her eyes. “ Was it not nat- 
ural that I should think so } ” she asked. 

“ Perhaps it was natural,” he answered, “ but 
you were mistaken. My only sentiment with 
regard to that past folly is one of sincerest 
thankfulness for my escape. The last time we 
sat like this together — have you forgotten the 
evening in the orange grove.? — I told you 
that my fancy for Fanny Berrien was dead, 
killed by her duplicity to me and her selfish- 
ness toward you. I may have been a little 


8o 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


melodramatic, but I meant exactly what I 
said. From that day to this her memory has 
not cost me a pang. As for Mrs. Meredith, 
she is a very pretty and amusing person, who 
acted altogether according to her kind, and to 
whom for her conduct toward myself I bear 
no malice whatever. On the contrary, my 
sentiment toward her is one of lively grati- 
tude— although I have never forgiven her for 
her conduct toward you.” 

Aim^e had lifted her eyes now, and was 
looking at him again very steadily. It was 
as if she were deciding in her own mind the 
question of his sincerity. Then she said, with 
her old simplicity and directness : 

“ But why do you wish to tell this to me.^” 
“ Because,” he answered, “ whether I go or 
whether I stay, I do not wish you to regard 
me as the victim of a hopeless passion for the 
wife of Mr. Meredith.” 

“ I should scarcely have thought that,” she 
answered ; “ but it was surely natural to fancy 
that you might remember— with pain — ” 

“ Oh, no ; it is no matter for pain,” he said, 
as she hesitated — “ only for a light-comedy 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. i8i 

smile and sigh. Fancies of that sort come 
and go like dreams. One must know many 
of them before one learns what love real- 
ly is.’' 

She turned her dark, meditative eyes away 
from him. On one side was the interior of 
the marvelous old church, gleaming with 
marbles and precious stones; on the other 
the sunshiny Piazza, with its graceful arcades 
and flocks of sheeny pigeons. She looked 
toward the last as she said : 

“ I do not think I like such an idea.” 

“You.^^” he said, quickly. “No; how 
could jy^u like it ? It is not meant to apply to 
natures like yours.” 

“ Is it not ? ” she asked, with a smile. “ But 
how can you tell that, when you know noth- 
ing of my nature ? ” 

“ Do you think I know nothing of your 
nature?” he asked, smiling also. “If I had 
time, and you did not consider me too pre- 
sumptuous, I might prove the contrary, for 
you forget all that you showed me once — all 
the courage, the unselfishness, the humility. 
But I do not forget. And has no one ever 


i 82 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


told you that you carry your soul on your 
lips and your heart in your eyes ? ’’ 

“ No ” she replied, “ I do not remember 
that any one ever told me so before — at least 
not exactly. But perhaps Fanny means the 
same thing when she tells me that my face is 
‘ ridiculously transparent.’ ” 

“ It is only a different way of stating the 
same thing,” said Kyrle, and then they both 
laughed. 

“ But seriously,” said he, after a moment, 
conscious of a very pleasant sense of camara- 
derie with this beautiful companion, “ have 
you no idea how you revealed yourself to me 
at that last meeting of ours under the orange 
trees How I can see you this moment, as 
you were then — such a delicate, childlike 
creature, but with a strength of resolution 
against which I arrayed all my strength in 
vain ! And then, when you opened your heart 
and told me the sad story of your life, and 
how it was gratitude which made you so 
resolute — do you think I could ever forget 
anything so touching } Many a time, in the 
years which have passed since then, I have 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 183 

thought of that scene, and said to myself, 
‘ God bless that child wherever she may 
be, for she has a heart as tender as it is 
brave ! ’ ” 

Something in his voice told her that he 
was speaking genuinely, without the least in- 
sincerity or thought of effect, and she could 
not but give him a grateful glance from the 
same dark eyes which had impressed him with 
their wonderful power of expression on the 
occasion of which he spoke. “ Y ou are very 
kind,” she said, trying to speak lightly, “ to 
have remembered an obstinate child so long ! ” 

“You were certainly very obstinate,” he 
said ; “ but how brave you were ! To think 
of your having had the courage to go alone 
to the sea wall that night, and to think of the 
selfishness and cowardice that sent you ! Par- 
don me for asking the question, but has no 
opportunity ever occurred for you to set your- 
self right in that matter } ” 

She shook her head. “How could it.^” 
she asked. “ Fanny has never had the cour- 
age to tell her husband the truth. But noth- 
ing disagreeable has arisen from it — to me, I 


1 84 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

mean,” she added, a little hurriedly. “You 
know you were afraid of that.” 

“ Y es,” he said. “ I am very glad that you 
have never been annoyed ; still, it is a shame 
that such a belief should be in the mind of 
any one with regard to you.” 

He spoke out, quickly and hotly, the in- 
dignation that on this subject was always 
within him and ready to find expression ; but 
he was sorry the next moment for the words 
when he saw a swift blush rise into her face, as 
with the sudden realization of what the belief 
was to which he alluded. Angry with himself, 
he went on hastily : 

“This being so — I mean, the burden of 
Mrs. Meredith’s conduct being still borne by 
you — I feel that I am bound to abstain on my 
part from anything which might cause you the 
least annoyance ; and so I have determined 
to go away. There shall not be the least mis- 
apprehension about you, arising from any act 
of mine.” 

So much was truth ; but, like many other 
people, Kyrle did not find it advisable to 
tell all the truth. He could not say, “Also, I 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 185 

am going, because if I stay I shall fall in love 
with you, and that will never do, for I am a 
poor man, and you are a rich woman.” But 
this was in his mind, even while the tempta- 
tion was growing greater every instant to for- 
get both of these stubborn facts. Aim^e was 
silent for a moment, and then— for the old 
courage, as well as the old simplicity, was still 
strong in her — she looked at him with her 
brave, direct glance, and said : 

“ If this is your reason for leaving Venice, 
I hope that you will not think of going. 
Your presence does not cause me the least an- 
noyance ; and I should be more sorry than I 
can tell you if mine were such an annoyance 
to you that we could not even remain in the 
same city. For, do you think I forget that if 
you are in a false position, it was my obsti- 
nacy that placed, or at least kept you there 
How earnestly you appealed to me, and I 
could not yield ! And are you now to be the 
sufferer by being driven away from this heav- 
enly place ? No, Mr. Kyrle, there is no justice 
in that. I will not allow it ! ” 

He could have smiled at the energy with 


1 86 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

which she spoke, partly because he read in it 
the old generous spirit, taking no heed or 
thought of herself, and partly because, in 
urging him to remain, she proved that she so 
little suspected the chief reason why departure ‘ 
seemed to him necessary. What he would 
have answered it is hard to say, for at that mo- 
ment the maid, bearing some packages, made 
her appearance, and Aim6e, rousing to the con- 
sciousness that there was something very un- 
conventional in this prolonged conversation, 
rose rather hastily, bade him good-morning, 
and walked away. 

“Going to leave Venice?” said Fanny 
Meredith. “What an absurd idea! What do 
you mean by it ? ” 

The time was two hours later than when, 
standing in the shadow of the cathedral porch, 
Kyrle had watched Aim6e cross the sunshine- 
flooded Piazza ; and the place was the privacy 
of Mrs. Meredith’s sitting-room in the Grand 
Hotel. The two people who occupied it were 
alone together for the first time since they had 
parted as lovers ; but it is safe to say that this 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 187 

thought was not in the mind of either of them. 
Kyrle, leaning back in a deep chair, was gazing 
absently out of the window at the beautiful 
proportions of Santa Maria della Salute just 
across the Grand Canal, while Mrs. Meredith, 
with her pretty brows knitted, was gazing at 
him, 

“ I mean,” he said slowly, in reply to her 
last words, “ that I think it is the only wise 
course open to me.” 

She threw herself back with an impatient 
gesture. “You are as incomprehensible as 
ever!” she exclaimed. “ Now, what on earth 
do you mean by the only wise course open to 
you.?” 

“ Briefly, then,” said Kyrle, “ you were 
shrewd enough to observe last night that I 
am in danger of falling in love with Miss 
Vincent — ” 

“Oh, no,” said Fanny, shaking her head, 
“ I observed that the thing was already ac- 
complished.” 

“ There you are mistaken,” said he ; “ it is 
not already accomplished. Or if it were,” he 
added, lamely, “there is the more reason for 


i88 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


my going away, since I only expose myself to 
useless pain by remaining.” 

“ But why useless pain ? ” asked she. “ Have 
you so faint a heart that you are afraid of 
Percy J oscely n as a rival } ” 

“Not at all,” answered he, calmly. “But 
it is quite impossible for me to become his 
rival. Have you not told me that Miss Vin- 
cent is 2t great heiress } ” 

“Yes; she has a large fortune in her own 
right, and without any restrictions — happy 
girl ! ” 

“ I hope it may prove for her happiness,” 
said Kyrle, rather gloomily, “ but it is an 
effectual bar to any hope on my part. A 
newspaper correspondent would hardly be a 
fit parti for such an heiress.” 

“And whose fault is it that you are a 
newspaper correspondent?” asked Mrs. Mere- 
dith, with a malice born of past recollections. 
“But, in my opinion, that is all nonsense,” 
she went on, briskly. “ Birth and social posi- 
tion are the things to be considered, rather 
than a mere accident of money.” 

“The accident of money is what the world 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 189 

considers,” said he, “and I must consider it 
also. For myself, I have perhaps thought of 
it too little. If so, I am punished by finding 
it now an insuperable barrier between myself 
and the woman I might love.” 

Fanny opened her lips to speak, but ap- 
parently thought better of it before any words 
escaped. She closed them again and sat silent 
for a moment, evidently reflecting. Then she 
looked at Kyrle with an expression of re- 
signed regret, 

“ I remember how ob — that is, determined 
you are,” she said; “so I suppose there is 
nothing to be gained by arguing the matter. 
But since your mind is so fully made up, 
why should you run away? I thought that 
was the resource of weakness and inde- 
cision.” 

“No doubt it is,” said he, falling into the 
artful trap, “and I felt very weak last night, 
I assure you. But, after all, there is no reason 
why I should go at once — ” looking out at 
the enchanting sea and sky, and remembering 
Aimde's last words. “ A day or two can not 
matter, and it is nobody’s affair but my own 

13 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


190 

if I choose to pay for present pleasure by 
future pain.” 

“ Oh, dear, no — not anybody’s affair at all,” 
said Fanny. “And then, you can so easily 
take another trip to Egypt and forget all 
about it. I really wish you would stay,” she 
added, persuasively. “We might have such a 
pleasant time wandering about Venice! And 
a man need not abjure the society of a 
woman because he thinks her too rich to 
marry.” 

“No, certainly not,” said Lennox, though 
he knew in his heart that this was sophistry. 
“Well, at least I will not go to-day. I will 
stay as long as I first intended — that is, two 
or three days longer.” 

“How nice of you!” said Fanny, with a 
gleam of triumph in her eyes. “And you 
will also stay to breakfast ? ” 

“You are very kind, but not to-day. If 
you are going anywhere this afternoon, how- 
ever, and will allow me to join you — ” 

“ We are going out to the Lido. Meet 
us there, and we can all return together. And 
one word — don’t mind the incivility of the 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. igi 

Joscelyns. They are uncivil because they are 
afraid of you.” 

“ I am very well aware of that,” said he, 
with a smile. Then his heart sank, and his 
voice also, as he added, “ But if they only 
knew it, they have no cause for fear.” 

“ They are wiser than to believe that. And 
so am I,” thought Fanny ; but she took very 
good care not to utter her thought aloud. 


VI. 

Somewhat to Mrs. Meredith's and also to 
Kyrle's own surprise, he had no incivility to 
encounter from any of the Joscelyns when he 
joined their party on the Lido that afternoon. 
The heads of the family received him courte- 
ously, if stiffly, and Miss Joscelyn greeted him 
like an old friend. Indeed, by what means he 
could not for the life of him tell, she soon 
managed to monopolize his attention, calling 
upon him for the little services which no 
gentleman can refuse to render to a woman, 
and presently drawing him aside from the rest 


192 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


of the party to walk with her on the beach, 
while she discoursed to him of many things in 
heaven and earth which did not interest him in 
the least. His judgment upon her, meanwhile, 
was uncompromising. 

“ A mass of silliness and affectation,” he said 
to himself, but in this he did her some injus- 
tice. She was not only less silly than he im- 
agined — possessing, in fact, a good deal of 
shrewdness — but at the present time she had 
an object in view in her discursive conversa- 
tion which his irritated and distracted mind 
was far from perceiving. 

For it is to be feared that, had pearls of wit 
and wisdom dropped from her lips, they would 
have fallen on equally inattentive ears. Kyrle 
had said sternly to himself, while on his way to 
the Lido, that he would be very careful not to 
devote himself to Aim^e ; that, because she had 
asked him to remain in Venice, he was the 
more bound not to cause her the faintest shad- 
ow of annoyance by attentions that might be 
misconstrued ; and that he would only allow 
himself the pleasure of seeing and of talking 
to her, as any other chance acquaintance might. 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


193 


But to renounce voluntarilY some happiness 
for which Nature longs is one thing, and to 
have it forcibly placed beyond reach by outside 
agency is another. Even if the happiness in 
question is no more than looking into a pair of 
soft, dark eyes, and listening to ordinary sen- 
tences uttered in a sweet voice, one may be 
supported in voluntary renunciation by a sense 
of virtue which is altogether lacking in feeling 
that the matter is taken out of one’s own power. 
So Kyrle chafed inwardly against the quiet but 
resolute hold of Miss Joscelyn upon his atten- 
tion, even while he said to himself that it was 
in a degree what he had intended, and that he 
was glad of an opportunity to prove to these 
people what an absurd fiction it was that he 
had ever been Aimee’s lover. 

Yet all the time he was conscious of an in- 
sistent desire, the hunger of the heart which 
comes with love, to renew the charm of that 
half hour in the atrium of St. Mark’s, to take 
up the thread of conversation where they had 
dropped it, and feel again that sense of sym- 
pathy and comradeship, of understanding and 
being understood, which had quickened all his 


194 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


being into new life. And, instead of this, he 
was pacing the beach with Lydia Joscelyn, and 
lending half an ear to what he called in his own 
mind empty twaddle. 

Twaddle it might be, but empty — that is, 
devoid of meaning — it was not. Lydia, with an 
art which did her credit, approached slowly but 
surely to the point she had distinctly in view ; 
and presently she touched it. 

“ Percy tells me that you sing beautifully, 
Mr. Kyrle,” she said. “He declares that he 
never heard anything finer than your singing 
in the gondola last night. Y ou must come out 
with us to-night and let me hear you. I adore 
fine singing. I wonder that Aimee never 
mentioned that you had such a fine voice.” 

Kyrle, roused from partial abstraction by 
the sound of Aimde’s name, fell unconsciously 
into the trap. “ I do not think that Miss Vin- 
cent knew anything about my voice,” he re- 
plied, “ so it would have been difficult for her 
to say anything about it.” 

“No!” said his companion, opening her 
eyes. “ I thought I had understood that you 
were quite old friends.” 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


195 


This roused him thoroughly, for the tone 
implied much more than the words. The in- 
dignation which was ever ready to be excited 
on this point rose within him, as it had risen 
before that day. He determined that nothing 
should induce him to lend his aid to Fanny 
Berrien’s deception, and allow these people to 
fancy injurious things of Aim^e. Miss Josce- 
lyn was a little startled by the haughtiness of 
his glance as he turned it on her. 

“ I could esteem nothing more of an hon- 
or,” he said, stiffly, “ than to have been either 
an old or a new friend of Miss Vincent. But, 
in point of fact, our acquaintance in the past 
was very slight, as your knowledge that she 
was quite a child at the time might inform you.” 

Oh ! ” said Miss Joscelyn. Even her self- 
poswsession had need to recover itself after this 
douche of cold water. But, while she ex- 
claimed mentally that he was a perfect churl, 
her resentment was accompanied by a sense of 
triumph. “ There is a mystery,” she thought, 
“and I am sure that Fanny Meredith is at the 
bottom of it ! ” With a laudable desire of 
probing further, therefore, she went on : 


196 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

“ We have all misunderstood a little, then,” 
she said, with some significance. “ There has 
been an impression created — not so much by 
Aim^e as by Mrs. Meredith — that you were 
friends in a very particular sense. I think,” 
she added, with an air of carefully weighing 
her words, “ that it is a pity such an impression 
should be allowed to remain, if it does Aim^e 
an injustice.” 

“If such an impression exists,” said Kyrle, 
with emphasis, “it certainly does Miss Vincent 
the greatest injustice, and should not be per- 
mitted to remain. I repeat that my acquaint- 
ance with her was very slight, and that I 
thought of her only as a child, though I was 
struck by some qualities very remarkable in a 
child, which she displayed.” 

“ It is singular, since your acquaintance 
with her was so slight, that you should have 
been able to discover these qualities,” observed 
Miss Joscelyn, innocently, “ for Aim^e is very 
reserved, very secretive, one may say, in her 
nature.” 

“ There were circumstances which called 
out the qualities,” said Kyrle, briefly ; for he 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


197 


began to understand that he was being sub- 
jected to a process vulgarly known as pump- 
ing, and he had no idea of either gratifying 
Miss Joscelyn’s curiosity or betraying Fanny 
Meredith’s secret, unless defense of Aimde 
should make the last absolutely necessary. 

“ It is rather difficult to imagine what cir- 
cumstances calculated to draw out remarkable 
qualities could have thrown together a shy 
child like Aimee and a young man like your- 
self,” said Miss Joscelyn, musingly. She 
glanced at him, and since the expression of 
his face said plainly that he declined to be 
communicative regarding these circumstances, 
she proved her talent for cross-examination by 
a swift and unexpected diversion : 

“ What a very attractive girl Fanny Ber- 
rien was at that timej Speaking of your ac- 
quaintance with Aim^e reminds me that it 
was during that winter in Florida she became 
engaged to Mr. Meredith. It was said that 
she jilted auother man shamefully — some one 
to whom she had been engaged a long time — 
in order to marry him.” 

“Very likely,” responded Kyrle, feeling 


198 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

bound to make some comment. “ I should 
imagine that Mrs. Meredith was never in- 
clined to limit herself in strings to her bow.” 

“ She was always a dreadful flirt ! ” said 
Lydia, shaking her head with an air of virtu- 
ous reprobation. “ I fancy Mr. Meredith does 
not know a quarter of her escapades.” 

“ Are we not always informed that, where 
ignorance is bliss, only folly would desire to 
be wise ? ” replied Kyrle, impatiently. “ But 
shall we not return to your party ? I think I 
see some one waving to us.” 

Some one was indeed waving energet- 
ically and when they reached the group they 
found them in readiness to embark on the 
return voyage. In fact, the Merediths, Aim^e, 
and Percy Joscelyn already filled one gondola. 
Fanny met Kyrle's crestfallen look with a 
mocking gleam in her eye. 

^“All things do not come to him who 
waits too long,” she said, oracularly. “ Had 
you been a little earlier, I might have of- 
fered you a place with us ; but now you 
will have to return as you came, alone, un- 
less Lydia allows you to recline at her feet.” 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


199 


“We shall be very happy if Mr. Kyrle will 
come with us,” said the major, blandly. 

But Mr. Kyrle declined, more emphatically 
than was necessary. His own gondola was 
waiting, he said, and (this the merest and 
vaguest politeness), since he was alone, could 
he not offer a seat to any one ? 

Miss Joscelyn and her brother exchanged 
glances, and then the young lady sweetly 
spoke : “ Since you are so kind, Mr. Kyrle — 
it really is too bad for you to have to return 
alone — and as there are only two comfortable 
seats in a gondola, I will give mine to papa 
and come with you.” 

She held out her hand to be assisted into 
the boat, and Kyrle, mentally anathematizing 
his own politeness, muttered that he was “ de- 
lighted,” Fanny Meredith laughed rather ir- 
relevantly, and they all pushed off. 

What a picture it was when they were 
floating on the wide lagoon, with Venice ris- 
ing before them out of the shining waters, its 
domes and towers enveloped in the golden 
haze of sunset, like some dream of fancy, too 
magically fair for reality! In such an hour 


200 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


and scene, who does not long for sympathetic 
companionship ? Poor Kyrle at least did, as 
instinctively he glanced toward the gondola 
that held Aimde, and thought how different all 
this glory of earth and sky, all the enchanted 
lovelness of the most poetical spot on earth, 
would have appeared to him had he been able 
to see it reflected in her eyes. 

“ Upon my word, Lydia, you astonished 
me this afternoon !” Mr. Percy Joscelyn con- 
descended to say to his sister that evening. 
“ I really had no idea of your ability before. 
You managed the situation perfectly. I never 
saw anything better done than the v/ay you 
took possession of Kyrle.” He laughed softly. 
“ The fellow’s face, when he stepped into his 
gondola, was a study ! ” 

Lydia flushed at the laugh. She was 
pleased to be commended — to have proved 
conclusively that she had power to do what 
she had undertaken ; but her vanity suffered 
under the imputation that she had forced 
herself upon an unwilling man. No woman 
likes to feel this. Even if it be a fact, she 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


201 


conceals it as far as possible from herself, and 
never forgives the person who thrusts it bru- 
tally before her. 

“ I did not find it at all difficult to monop- 
olize Mr. Kyrle, as you call it,” she said, with a 
tone of offense in her voice. “He did not 
seem to object to being monopolized. And 
about Aim^e — I have found out just what I 
expected — he never was her lover at all.” 

“ How do you know.^^” asked her brother, 
eagerly. 

“ Because he told me so. Oh, you need not 
laugh ! I was not foolish enough to ask the 
question as a question ; I made him tell me 
what I wanted to know without his hardly 
being aware that he was telling it. I think I 
remember all the conversation. It was like 
this—” 

She proceeded to give a fairly accurate re- 
port of it, to which Percy listened with the 
keenest attention, and, when she finished, ad- 
mitted that her conclusions were probably 
right. 

“ I agree with you that it was most likely 
some tricky game of Fanny Berrien’s, in which 


202 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


she used Aim^e as a blind,” he said. “ And, 
late in the day as it is, there is nothing I should 
like SO much as to get on the track of it and 
expose her. But we have no proof — none 
whatever — for you say this fellow will not 
speak, and we know that Aim^e will not.” 

“ He may speak — that is, he may give me 
information without intending to do so, as he 
did this afternoon,” Lydia calmly replied. “ I 
don’t despair of finding out the whole thing ; 
but, after all, it has no great bearing on the 
present state of affairs.” 

“ More than you imagine,” her brother 
said. “ A hold on Mrs. Meredith would be 
the most useful thing possible to me just now. 
If, as I don’t doubt, this man was an old 
lover of hers, she has not only deceived her 
husband with regard to him, but she is now 
bringing him forward as a suitor for Aim^e. 
Give me one iota of proof of the story we both 
believe, and I will go to her and say : ‘ You 
have probably still sufficient influence over Mr. 
Kyrle to send him away. If not, I shall have 
the pleasure of telling Mr. Meredith the story 
of your love affair with him in the past. Get 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


203 


me the proof, Lydia — give me the power to 
say this — and there is nothing you can ask me 
that I will not do for you.” 

“ I will do my best,” said Lydia, “ but abso- 
lute proof is difficult to get, you know. One 
may be perfectly certain, and yet not have 
that.” 

“ I know,” Percy answered. “ But any- 
thing that would give me a hold over that 
woman — ” He broke off in his speech, but the 
intensity of his tone boded little good to Fanny 
Meredith should that hold over her be ob- 
tained. “ One thing, at least, is certain,” he re- 
sumed after a moment — “the man explicitly 
denied to you that he had ever been Aim^e’s 
lover.” 

“ Explicitly and emphatically.” 

“ Then that point is number one secured. 
This is a good beginning. Continue the work, 
Lydia, and let us see how long Mr. Kyrle will 
allow himself to be monopolized.” 


204 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


VII. 

Mr. Kyrle allowed himself to be mo- 
nopolized almost unresistingly for several days. 
Not indeed as completely as at the Lido, but 
to a degree sufficient to prevent any satisfac- 
tory intercourse with Aim^e. A sudden pas- 
sion for excursions seemed to have seized the 
Joscelyns, who had hitherto seen as little as 
possible of the different places in which they 
had unwillingly sojourned, and who had seemed 
quite insensible to any claims of art or history 
upon their attention. Now, however, they 
discovered that the neighborhood of Venice 
abounded in places of interest ; and Lydia 
arranged one excursion after another to the 
adjacent islands, excursions which Kyrle was 
invited to join, and during which he was 
carefully kept as much as possible apart from 
Aim^e. 

The tactics by which this was managed 
were beautifully simple. He found himself 
sitting by Miss Joscelyn's side in a gondola, 
carrying her shawl, offering her his arm when- 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


205 

ever the need for an arm arose, without in 
the least understanding how it all came about. 
But one of the lookers-on understood per- 
fectly, and laughed to herself with an amuse- 
ment not untinclured by malice. “ He de- 
clined my aid,” Mrs. Meredith thought, “so I 
shall leave him to Lydia’s mercy. A man, 
poor creature, is so helpless in such a case ! ” 
This man was certainly very helpless. 
There was not in him any of the tincture of 
brutality which exists in men who can release 
themselves from such a position by the sim- 
plest and most direct methods. He could not 
be deaf when a woman asked for assistance ; 
he could not refuse to hold a parasol over 
her when she requested him to do so, nor 
leave her alone when, falling behind the oth- 
ers, she pleaded fatigue and begged to “ rest 
a little.” ^hey were all threadbare artifices, 
but still strong enough to hold one who to 
the instincts of a gentleman in such matters 
added a certain hopelessness with regard to 
his own affairs. For, after all, he said to him- 
self, he had made up his mind not to compro- 
mise Aim^e by attentions of a loverlike char- 


14 


2o6 a comedy of elopement. 

acter, and it was well that Lydia Joscelyn 
should help him to keep this somewhat dif- 
ficult resolution. 

But it was a resolution which every day 
became more difficult, as every day the charm 
that breathed from her presence laid deeper 
hold upon him. Despite the vigilance of the 
Joscelyns, they had occasional opportunities 
for conversation, and every such opportunity 
seemed to him to strengthen that impression 
of a rare individuality which she had from their 
first acquaintance made upon him. Now and 
then there were glimpses of thoughts and feel- 
ings that lay usually hidden under the gentle 
composure with which she met the world ; 
and these glimpses, he had a fancy, were given 
only to him. One of these rare occasions oc- 
curred on an excursion to one of the islands, 
where they encountered another grotJf) of tour- 
ists, who, proving to be acquaintances, dis- 
tracted for a time the attention of the rest of 
the party and so made it possible for him to 
find Aim^e alone. She was sitting, when he 
discovered her, under the shadow of the clois- 
ters belonging to the ancient and partially de- 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


207 


serted monastic building they were supposed 
to be examining, gazing seaward ; and as he 
approached unobserved, he was struck by the 
wistful, almost sad expression of her face. The 
expression vanished as she became conscious 
of his presence; only a slight shadow still 
lingered in her eyes as she turned them on 
him. But she spoke, with a smile : 

“ Does a scene like this,” she said, indicat- 
ing the wide, beautiful marine picture spread 
before them, “ ever rouse in you the expecta- 
tion of seeing a sail rise up from ‘ the under- 
world ’ bringing some wonderful good fortune 
to you ? I am always expecting it. I never 
look at an ocean horizon without saying to 
myself, ‘ When will my sail come ? ’ ” 

“ I thought,” he said, as he sat down be- 
side her, “that your sail had come, bearing 
what most people consider the best of good 
fortune.” 

“You mean money?” she asked. “Yes, 
that came to me, and I am not so ungrate- 
ful as to underrate its value, though I can 
not say it has done much for me ; but I am 
not thinking of anything so prosaic, in look- 


2o8 a comedy of elopement. 

ing for my fairy sail. That will bring — ah, 
I know not what, but something that will 
give a different meaning to life. All things 
seem possible there ” — she waved her hand 
toward the distant meeting-place of sea and 
sky ; “ one feels as if everything for which 
one longs might come out of that mysterious 
distance.” 

“ But if the magic fortune delays, why not 
go in search of it?” Kyrle asked, smiling at 
the fancifulness of the talk. “ Shall we em- 
bark ? Behind that dim line we may find all 
that we have lacked in life awaiting us.” 

She shook her head. “ No,” she answered ; 
“ I have no heart to search the unknown. I 
am one of those who can only sit on the shore 
and wait the coming of the sail, however much 
it may delay.” 

Something in her tone, an unconscious 
echo of the sadness still lurking in her eyes, 
made Kyrle realize more fully than he had 
ever done before that her life was certainly 
not happy. How, indeed, could happiness in 
any positive degree exist in such an environ- 
ment as hers? Physical well-being, the com- 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


209 


fort and luxury of wealth were hers ; but what 
besides, what love for the tender heart, what 
sympathy for the aspiring mind.^ No wonder 
that the dark, wistful eyes sought the horizon 
for the magic sail that should bring some 
meaning into her colorless days. A rush of 
pity made speech impossible to him for sev- 
eral minutes, and with pity came a longing 
like a passion to seize and bear her away from 
the odious people who surrounded and preyed 
upon her, into the sunshine of such a full and 
generous existence as her nature craved. It 
was the force of repression which he had to 
exert upon himself which made his voice 
sound almost stem, as he said : 

“ The most of us can do little more than 
sit on the shore and wait for sails that long 
delay in their coming. But I fear that what 
we chiefly look for them to bring is that pro- 
saic fortune which you despise.’’ 

“ Oh, no,” she answered, quickly, “ I am not 
so foolish nor, as I have said, so ungrateful 
as to despise wealth. But if I do not rate 
its power as high as most people seem to do, 
that is natural. My fortune has really brought 


210 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


me very little personal good. I have often 
thought that I should have been happier 
without it. Yet that seems ungrateful; and 
my family would think it sheer profanity,” she 
added, with a smile. 

“ I wish,” said Kyrle, with an energy that 
was fairly startling, “ I wish to Heaven that I 
were a rich man ! Shall I tell you what I 
would do? It is understood that we are in 
fairyland, you know. I would have a yacht — 
a very sea-gull for swiftness and beauty — at my 
bidding, and I would take you — ” 

“ Oh, here she is ! ” said a voice at a little 
distance — the far from welcome voice of Percy 
Joscelyn. “ Aim^e, we are waiting for you.” 

It chanced that Kyrle was thinking of this 
conversation and all that it had suggested the 
next day as, having left the party in a church 
engaged in inspecting, with blank amazement, 
some frescoes of Carpaccio which Mr. Ruskin 
has held up to the admiration of the world, 
he went out on the little piazza before the 
church and sat down on the steps which led 
down to the canal, to wait for them. As he 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


2II 


sat there in the soft Venetian sunlight he 
was of two moods — one to go quickly, at 
once, out of a temptation which had become 
overmastering ; the other, to cast all scruples 
to the winds, and show these people — who 
fancied, forsooth, that their stratagems and 
devices had any power to restrain him — how 
little such barriers of straw would stand in 
his way did he once resolve to take that way. 
Some one, who came quietly out of the church 
and sat down beside him, thought that at this 
moment he looked more like the old, master- 
ful Lennox Kyrle than he had looked since 
she had seen him under these new conditions. 

“ I wonder,’' said Fanny Meredith, “ if you 
are by this time aware that you are a very fool- 
ish man ? ” 

He turned and looked at her. “ I have 
been aware of it for a long time,” he answered, 
quietly. 

“ And is not the knowledge of folly the be- 
ginning of wisdom } Are you not sorry now 
that you refused my good offices 7 ” 

“ Did I refuse them ? I am not sure of it. 
But, if so, the reason holds good now as then, 


212 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


which made it impossible for me to accept 
them. You urged me to come forward as a 
suitor to your cousin, and I told you that I 
was too poor a man to think of doing so. My 
position has not changed since then.” 

“ But if you don't see the folly of that, you 
are not at the beginning of wisdom,” said she, 
impatiently. “ Why, according to your fancy, 
only rich people should ever marry rich peo- 
ple ; when, on the contrary, it should really 
be the other way ! The proper equalizing of 
wealth demands that rich persons should marry 
poor ones.” 

He was not in a mirthful mood, but to 
refrain from laughing at this was impossible. 
“ It is a new thing for you to appear in the 
character of a political economist,” he said. 
“Your theory is well enough, and I find no 
fault with those who practice it. But I must 
decline to be one of the poor persons who aid 
in the equalization of wealth by such means.” 

“Well, / am one of them,” said Fanny, 
quite unabashed, turning a diamond ring round 
on her finger so that its flashing splendor lent 
emphasis to the assertion, “ and I can assure 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 213 

you that it is a very good means. Pride is 
the matter with you,” she went on, remorse- 
lessly, “ and I call it a very selfish thing — much 
worse than the mercenary spirit, which I pre- 
sume you feel very virtuous in despising ! You 
don't deny that you are in love with Aim^e ; 
you dare not say that she is not worth a 
thousand times more than her fortune ; and 
yet you are prepared to let her go, for the 
sake of the money you profess to hold in 
such scorn, and because the Joscelyns might 
call you a fortune-hunter ” 

This was certainly very plain speech, and 
contained a kernel of truth which struck 
Kyrle sharply. “If I have held money in 
scorn,” he said, “ it has only been with re- 
gard to myself. I know well what its value 
is in the eyes of others. And it Is true that I 
think too much of my own pride, perhaps ; but 
this is a point on which I have always been 
peculiarly sensitive — ” 

“ As if I did not know that ! ” she inter- 
posed, with a note of that curious old resent- 
ment against his culpable indifference to mer- 
cenary considerations in her voice. “ Y ou 


214 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


were so afraid of being suspected of paying 
court to your uncle, that you behaved out- 
rageously to him. Oh, it was a very fine thing 
to show your spirit, your independence, your 
scorn of 'groveling souls that cared for money ! 
So you lost a fortune which a little compliance 
with an old man’s whims would have secured 
to you ; and now you are enjoying the fine 
results thereof, and preparing to be guilty of 
the same folly, only in an aggravated form, 
over again ! ” 

Some people, leaning in the windows of 
one of the tall, old houses across the canal, and 
watching the little scene curiously, remarked 
among themselves that the pretty foreign lady 
seemed to be a terrible scold, and that the 
poor man — her husband, probably — had little 
to say undei her rating. “He has deserved it, 
no doubt,” remarked one woman, enlightened 
by her own experience. “ It is a case of jeal- 
ousy, most likely.” 

“ What a vindictive creature you are ! ” 
Kyrle was meanwhile saying, with a smile. 
“ Why can not my old follies — for which, as 
you justly observe, I am now suffering — be 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


215 

allowed to rest ? I grant you that I was fool- 
ish, impracticable, full of pride — ” 

“ As you are yet,” she interpolated. 
“Granted again. But a fortune-hunter — 
to be suspected of seeking a woman for her 
wealth — that is something I should feel very 
deeply. Yet Miss Vincent is indeed worth so 
much more than her fortune, that to speak of 
it in connection with her seems an insult. If 
she were only rid of it — ” 

“But she is not,” said practical Fanny; 
“ and you can hardly expect her to give it or 
throw it away in order to oblige you.” 

“ I expect notking,” he answered impa- 
tiently. “And I do not understand why you 
should talk as if I had only to put out my hand 
and grasp a prize which I am sure would, under 
any circumstances, be far beyond my reach.” 

“Your humility does you credit,” she said. 
“ But in my opinion there is no reason why 
you should not grasp the prize if you would 
only resolve to make the effort. It is not on 
your own account that I urge you in this man- 
ner,” she added, quickly, “ but because I want 
to rescue Aim^e. You do not understand, 


2i6 a comedy of elopement. 

and she hardly understands, in what a bondage 
she is held. If those people can prevent it, 
she will never marry anybody, unless it be 
Percy Joscelyn. By every possible means 
they keep suitors away from her ; and if I had 
not been here, you would never have been 
allowed' to approach her near enough to bow 
to her. Through me you have a chance that 
no other man has had before. But if you are 
so blind, if you throw it away for a mere 
scruple, if you think more of your own pride 
than of saving her — then you may go ! I 
have nothing more to say to you.” 

She rose as she uttered the last words, and 
Kyrle, who had listened to the latter part of 
her speech with amazement, could scarcely be- 
lieve that it was Fanny Meredith who was 
leaving him with such an air of dignity. He 
rose too, and made a step after her. There 
was a sensible quickening of interest among 
the heads at the windows opposite, as the 
scene promised to become more dramatic. 
“It must be a lover’s quarrel,” some one sug- 
gested. “If he were her husband he would 
not follow her.” 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


217 


“ Stop a minute,” Kyrle said. “ If you 
have nothing more to say to me, at least let 
me say something to you. I have never 
looked at the matter in exactly the light in 
which you have put it. But if you will have 
patience, if you will give me a little time to 
consider, I will tell you my final decision be- 
fore to-day is ended.” 

“In your place, I would tell mine in five 
minutes,” said Fanny, scornfully. 

“Very likely,” said he, humbly, “but you 
must make allowances for the slowness of the 
masculine mind. Can I see you — will you be 
at home this afternoon ? ” 

“ N o,” she replied, after a moment’s consid- 
eration, “ for Mr. Meredith would likely be at 
home also, and we could not speak freely. 
But you may meet me at the top of the Cam- 
panile about sunset.” 

She had hardly said this, and Kyrle had no 
more than time to assent, when Miss Joscelyn 
emerged from the church and came toward 
them with an air of surprise. 

“ I have been wondering what had become 
of Mr. Kyrle,” she said. “You really should 


2I8 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


not have kept him from studying those ex- 
traordinary frescoes of Carpaccio.” 

“ They are certainly extraordinary,” said 
Fanny, dryly, “ but I have not kept Mr. Kyrle 
from them. I found him here when I came 
out for a little relief of sunshine. I hope that 
we are done with Carpaccio now, and that we 
are going home. It is time for lunch, and I 
am hungry.” 

This seemed to be the general sentiment of 
the party, which, with a somewhat stupefied 
appearance — as of having taken art in rather 
too large a dose — now emerged from the 
church. The major was shaking his head 
Mr. Ruskin is, no doubt, a fine judge of 
painting,” he was saying, “but, really — ah — 
hum — to send one to see such pictures as 
these ! ” 

Aim^e, who was walking behind with Per- 
cy, looked tired and pale, and when Kyrle met 
her eyes he was about to step to her side, but 
a hand was suddenly laid on his arm. 

“ Do be kind enough to raise this parasol 
for me,” said Miss Joscelyn. “The sun is posi- 
tively blinding.” 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


219 


Kyrle raised the parasol, and, accepting his 
fate, assisted her into the waiting gondola. 
But then, instead of following, he stepped 
back, and, lifting his hat quietly, bade the party 
adieu “ until to-morrow.” 

“You will not join us this afternoon?” in- 
quired Lydia, with some surprise and evident 
concern. 

“ I am sorry that I can not have that pleas- 
ure,” he answered. “ I have a budget of corre- 
spondence to read, and another budget to dis- 
patch.” 

“Then we will defer the excursion to Mu- 
rano till to-morrow,” said she, positively. 

Kyrle did not answer, but watched the 
gondola, as it moved away, with a very grave 
face. The moment of temptation had come 
now in earnest. Ought he to think of himself 
and his own pride, when it was a question of 
rescuing the fair and gentle creature who had 
won his heart from such a’ bondage as that 
which Fanny described? If it were true that 
by a singular chance he had been enabled to 
approach her more nearly than any other man 
had ever approached her, or was likely in the 


220 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


future to do, did it not seem as if Fate point- 
ed him out as her rescuer? Yet, for him, by 
comparison a poor man, to woo so rich a 
woman, to meet the insults of her friends, and 
bear the brand of a fortune-hunter in the eyes 
of the world — that was a bitter necessity to 
face; and, revolving it in his mind, he went 
slowly home. 

He had been strictly within the limit of 
the truth when he told Miss Joscelyn that he 
had a budget of correspondence to read, for 
the accumulation of several weeks had reached 
him only that morning, and he had not taken 
time to wade through it before going out. 
After a light ddjellner, he set himself to the 
task, partly because it was a necessity, and 
partly to distract his mind from the question 
which he was constantly asking and altogether 
unable to answer. 

So, after going through several letters with 
a very distracted attention, he took up and 
opened one which was addressed in a strange 
handwriting and bore the stamp of a legal 
firm. “How can I — I, who have nothing!” 
was the refrain echoing through his brain as 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


221 


he broke the seal. But a minute later he ut- 
tered a great exclamation, and sat staring in- 
credulously at the paper before him. 

Instead of having nothing, this letter in- 
formed him that he possessed a fortune of not 
less than a million and a half dollars. 


VIIL 

The sun had set, but there was a radiant 
sunset sky, as well as a view of great extent 
to be seen from the Campanile as two ladies 
stood there, and, leaning over the parapet of 
the great tower, looked down on Venice, with 
the Grand Canal winding through its midst 
like a silver serpent ; at the coast of Istria 
and the blue summits of the Alps afar; and 
at the Adriatic spreading to meet the sky. 
One fastened her dark eyes on that distant 
line of blending sea and sky, but the other 
bestowed her regard chiefly on the Piazza at 
her feet, where people seemed to be crawling 
about like ants. Presently one of these ants 

crossed the square more quickly than the rest 
15 


222 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


and entered the loggia at the foot of the 
Campanile. Mrs. Meredith looked round at 
her companion. 

“ I think I see Mr. Kyrle coming up,” 
she remarked. 

Aim^e turned with a slight start from the 
contemplation of the Adriatic. “ How do you 
know that it is Mr. Kyrle ?” she asked. “ It 
may be any one.” 

“ I know because I told him that we were 
to be here,” returned the other, carelessly. “ I 
thought the poor fellow needed a little relief 
from the society of Lydia. He really begins 
to look worn and pale under the ordeal.” 

“ I can not see why you should draw such 
a conclusion,” said Aim^e. “If he did not 
like Lydia’s society, he need not endure it. A 
man can do what he likes in such matters.” 

“ Simpleton ! is that all you know about 
it?” said Fanny. “Why, unless he absolutely 
runs away, a man is helpless in the hands of 
a woman who knows how to play such a game 
as Lydia is playing. And this man does not 
want to run away, because he adores you*' 

“ Fanny ! ” 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


223 


“It is quite true. He adores you, and yet 
he is so afraid of your fortune that he dare 
not approach you. He does not believe that 
a poor man has any right to try to marry a 
rich woman.” 

A flush that seemed borrowed from the 
sunset was now on Aim^e's face. She cast a 
glance of reproach at her cousin. 

“If it is true,” she said, hurriedly, “ why 
have you chosen such a time to speak of it ? ” 

“ Because I thought it only a matter of jus- 
tice to let you know that he does not endure 
Lydia's attentions because he likes them,” re- 
plied Fanny, coolly. 

They were silent then, for steps were now 
heard inside the tower, ascending that inclined 
plane up which tradition tells that Napoleon 
rode his horse ; and a little later Kyrle stepped 
on the platform. 

The moment he appeared, Fanny Mere- 
dith saw that there was a change in him— a 
glow in his sunburned cheek, a light in his 
eye, and the air of a man who had burst some 
bond. She looked at him with surprise, and as 
he walked up to her — not seeing Aimde, who 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


224 

had retreated to the other side of the tower — 
she said, involuntarily : 

“ What is the matter ? You look — unlike 
yourself.” 

“ Do I ? ” he said, with a thrill of excite- 
ment in his voice. “Well, that is not strange. 
I am not myself — that is, I am not the man 
you parted with this morning, but quite an- 
other. Allow me to introduce myself to you 
as a millionaire.” 

She gave a cry, and clasped her hands. 
“Your uncle is dead, and has left you his 
money, after all ! ” she exclaimed. “ O Len- 
nox, I am so glad ! ” Then she turned swiftly 
and ran across the platform. “ O Aim^e ! ” 
she cried, “you must congratulate Mr. Kyrle. 
He has just come into a large fortune.” 

When Aim^e turned, she and Lennox were 
both pale — he, because he had not entertained 
the least expectation of finding her there ; and 
she, on account of this unexpected sequel to 
those last words of Fanny's, which were still 
ringing in her ears. 

“ I hope Mr. Kyrle will accept my con- 
gratulations/ she said, “although” — and she 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


225 

smiled a faint, tremulous smile — “ I am not 
sure that to inherit a great deal of money is 
always such good fortune as the world be- 
lieves.” 

“Ah,” said Fanny, “such skepticism may 
do for people who have inherited it. But I 
do not think Mr. Kyrle will quarrel with his 
good fortune.” 

“No,” said Lennox, quietly, “I would be 
very far from quarreling with it — if it were 
really mine.” 

“If it were really yours ! ” repeated Mrs. 
Meredith, recoiling a step in her amazement 
and disappointment. “ What do you mean ? ” 

Lennox looked at Aim^e. “ I will tell 
you,” he replied, “ what I mean. When I said, 
a moment ago, that I am a millionaire, I said 
what is exactly true ; and ever since I read 
the letter announcing the news to me I have 
been playing with the sensation, with the idea, 
of being rich and free, and altogether living 
in a fool’s paradise. For” — his voice changed 
— “ it is true that the fortune is mine, but it 
is also true that I can not retain it.” 

“Good Heaven! why not?” cried Mrs. 


226 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

Meredith; while Aim6e said nothing, but 
looked at him with all her soul in her eyes ; 
and he, gazing into those eyes, answered : 

“ Because it is by an accident, not by the 
intention of my uncle, that I inherit this for- 
tune. It has long been his intention, of which 
I was well aware, to found with his wealth 
some great charity to perpetuate his name, 
and his will to that effect was drawn up many 
years ago. Lately he wished to alter it in 
some particulars, and directed his lawyer to 
draw up a new will according to his direc- 
tions. Before this will could be signed he 
died suddenly of apoplexy, and the older will 
having been destroyed, I inherit the property 
as nearest of kin.” 

“ Now, I call that providential ! ” said Fanny, 
in a tone of devout thanksgiving. “ I do not 
know when I have heard anything that gives 
me so much pleasure ! To think of that old — 
ahem — ^gentleman being so outwitted at last, 
and so thwarted in his desire to cheat you ! 
For I call it absolute cheating, when a man 
leaves his property away from his nearest rela- 
tive and natural heir.” 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


22 / 


“ Opinions differ on that point,” said Len- 
nox.' I hold that a man’s property is his 
own, to do with what he will ; provided, of 
course, that he does not neglect his duty to his 
children But that duty does not extend to a 
nephew, especially one who declined all that 
he offered, and chose another path in life. 
No, it seems to me that my plain duty is to 
regard that unsigned will as a valid instru- 
ment, and to execute it.” 

There was a minute’s silence after he fin- 
ished, for both of his hearers were completely 
taken by surprise. Fanny Meredith fairly 
gasped with amazement before she cried : 

“ Why, it is worse than quixotism — it is 
absolute madness ! I have never heard of 
such a thing in my life I What you threw 
away before, when you went against your un- 
cle’s wishes, was bad enough ; but this — ! ” 
Words failed her: tears absolutely came into 
her eyes. “ O Lennox,” she said, imploring- 
ly, “you surely will not do it! — Aim^e, for 
Heaven’s sake, speak to him ! He will listen 
to you ! ” 

Aimde flushed, but Lennox turned to her 


228 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

quickly. His face was set in resolute lines, 
but there was something in his eyes — a wist- 
ful, pathetic expression, as of one asking help 
— which touched her deeply. 

“Tell me,” he said, simply, “am I not 
right.?” 

It was a subject on which few people 
would have cared to offer advice, unless, like 
Fanny Meredith, they offered it on the side of 
worldly common-sense ; but Aimde did not 
hesitate. She answered as simply and directly 
as he had asked : 

“Yes — as far as I can judge, I think that 
you are right.” 

Fanny Meredith threw up her hands, as if 
appealing to earth and heaven against such 
folly. 

“ I think you are both mad,” she said, 
“and I really feel constrained to seek some 
saner society.” 

With this, before either could utter a word 
or make the least effort to detain her, she had 
turned and fled. For an instant they stood 
confounded, listening to the sound of her 
flying feet down that incline which is a 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


229 


veritable facilis descensus^ Then murmur- 
ing something quickly, Aim^e made a motion 
to follow ; but the consciousness of being a 
millionaire, were it only for an hour, gave 
Lennox courage and resolution. 

“ Pray do not go,” he said, earnestly ; “ she 
will be back presently, or — we can follow her. 
But first I must speak to you ; I wish to ask 
your advice.” 

“ I scarcely think that I am fitted to advise 
you,” she said, pausing at his request, but 
looking away from him. 

“You are eminently fitted,” he replied, 
“ because your opinion is of infinite value to 
me, and your approval worth more to me 
than that of any one else in the world. In- 
deed, if you approve, I care not who else dis- 
approves.” He stopped for an instant, then 
quickly went on : “I thank God that the 
temptation to keep this money has not over- 
powered me, for it has been great. Do you 
know why ? Because it seemed to put within 
my reach a prize which before had seemed as 
far from me as heaven ; at least, it made effort 
possible, it gave me leave to try. Before, how 


230 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


could I, how dared I, think of saying to 
one dowered like a princess, ‘ I love you ’ ? 
But if, with this fortune in my hand, I said 
it, no one could doubt my sincerity, no one 
could think that I sought her for anything 
save herself — herself, so far above all that a 
man could offer or give, that if he brought the 
wealth of the world he would still be un- 
worthy of her ! ” 

He paused, overpowered by his own emo- 
tion, and hardly expecting an answer from 
Aim^e. He could not see her face, for she 
had turned away from him, but he saw that 
she was trembling, and he was amazed by the 
clear steadiness of the voice in which she 
spoke after a moment. 

“ What a man could say with a fortune in 
his hand, he might surely — unless he thought 
more of money than of his own manhood — say 
without it.” 

“May I?” he cried, almost incredulously. 
“ You will let me say it — I, who had nothing 
yesterday, and will have nothing to-morrow ! 
— ^you will let me tell you that I love you 
with all my heart ? ” 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


231 


Another pause, and then — “ If that be true,” 
said the sweet voice, “why should it matter 
that you had nothing yesterday or that you 
will have nothing to-morrow ? ” 

“ It matters,” he answered, “ in the opinion 
of the world, which is quick to say of such a 
man — ” 

“ But, a moment ago, I thought that it 
was my opinion alone which mattered,” she 
interposed. 

“It is yours — yours alone,” he replied. 
“And if you tell me that I may hope, the 
scorn of the whole world can not hold me 
back from striving to win you.” 

She turned a beautiful, smiling face toward 
him. “ It seems to me,” she said, “ that a man 
who possesses or who has refused a fortune 
of a million or two can hardly fear that his 
disinterestedness could be questioned. But I ” 
— her voice sank a little — “ I do not think I 
should have needed the test.” 

Mrs. Meredith, sitting quietly below in the 
loggia of Sansovino, grew rather tired of wait- 
ing before the two from above came down to 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


232 

seek her. She rose, and looked at them with 
a smile. 

“Well,” she said, innocently, “have you set- 
tled the matter } Is the fortune to be given 
up, or retained } ” 

“ The fortune ! ” said Kyrle. “ I had for- 
gotten it ; but, of course, it is to be given up.” 

“Ah!” said Mrs. Meredith. She looked 
at him curiously, this man who was capable 
of such wild quixotism, and said to herself 
that certainly things were better as they were. 
There was no danger that Mr. Meredith would 
ever be troubled by any scruples which would 
cause him to resign his fortune. Then she 
shrugged her shoulders gently. “ I suppose it 
is quite useless to argue with you,” she said, 
“ but, at least, the fortune has done you a good 
turn, and I advise you to say nothing to any 
one else of your intention of resigning it. Do 
the thing, if you like, when you return to 
America, but don’t talk of it now. It is yours 
until you choose to give it away, so pray take 
the great advantage it will give you.” 

She did not say in what way, but Kyrle 
knew to what she alluded ; he knew that this 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


233 


wealth would render it difficult for the Josce- 
lyns to object to him. He looked doubtfully 
at Aimde. 

“That,” he said, “would seem like sailing 
under false colors ; or, at least, like winning 
what I most desire by a false representa- 
tion.” 

“Now, Heaven grant me patience!” said 
Mrs. Meredith, impatiently. “ But is not the 
fortune yours?” 

“ For the present, yes,” he answered. 

“ Then, why on earth should you take peo- 
ple who are not your friends into your con- 
fidence with regard to what you mean to do 
with it?” 

“ Simply,” he replied, “because those people 
have a right to know what is my true posi- 
tion in life, and an accident like my uncle^s 
unsigned will does not affect that position. 
Am I not right ? ” said he, turning to Aim^e. 

“ I think that you are,” she answered, 
quietly. 

“Very well,” said Mrs. Meredith, “go your 
own way. I wash my hands of you both; 
but I am very sure that before you are done 


234 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


with this affair you will wish that you had 
followed my advice.” 


IX. 

The event more than justified this pre- 
diction. The storm which burst when Kyrle 
proposed himself to Major and Mrs. Joscelyn 
as a suitor for Aimee was such as the latter, 
with all her experience, had never known be- 
fore. They would not have received the pro- 
posal of a prince had it been possible to 
refuse it, for they were resolutely determined 
to retain control of the heiress and her for- 
tune. But a man who by his own acknowl- 
edgment had nothing, yet was capable of 
throwing away a million or more dollars — 
words were too weak to express their opinion 
of him ! They rejected his suit with scorn, 
and the major grew fairly inarticulate when 
trying to express himself with regard to such 
unparalleled audacity. 

A penny-a-liner, a scribbler for newspa- 
pers, possessing not a dollar in property, yet 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


235 

SO insane as to refuse a fortune for an absurd 
scruple ! By Jove, a raving maniac would be 
as suitable a match ! Never should Aim^e 
throw herself away in such a manner — never ! 
If it were necessary, they would constrain her 
for her own good. She should not wreck her 
life and her fortune by marrying a madman. 

But the time had come when they were to 
learn what was in Aim^e. She had so sub- 
missively yielded to their demands hitherto 
that they expected her to yield now; but it 
was characteristic of her that the strength 
which her nature possessed only manifested 
itself on rare and supreme occasions, so that 
she now and then took even those who knew 
her best by surprise. She certainly took her 
tyrants by surprise on this occasion. Quietly, 
but steadily, she faced them like a rock. 

“ I shall marry Mr. Kyrle,” she said. “ I 
am sorry if my choice does not meet with my 
mother’s approval ; but it is a matter which 
concerns myself alone, and I can not suffer 
dictation with regard to it.” 

The major stormed, Mrs. Joscelyn tried 
tears and entreaties, culminating in hysterics, 


236 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

but Aimde remained unmoved. She calmly 
repeated her ultimatum, and left them. 

Then, in view of the gravity of the situa- 
tion, another family council was held. Percy 
came, pale and venomous with the shock of 
hearing that his worst fears had been realized, 
and Lydia with a suspicious redness around 
her eyes. She not only shrank in anticipation 
from the bitterness of her brother's taunts and 
reproaches upon the failure of her effort to 
attract Kyrle, but there was a sting in the fail- 
ure itself, for her fancy was of the order that 
went out to any man who approached her, and 
her eagerness to detain the young correspond- 
ent at her side had not been dictated only by 
regard for the family interest. 

Percy condescended to throw her but one 
stinging word. “ I was a fool to trust to such 
poor arts as yours,” he said. “ Of course, the 
man was only amusing himself with your van- 
ity and laughing in his sleeve at all of us. You 
have failed totally in keeping him from Aim^e ; 
have you succeeded better in discovering any- 
thing about his past relations with Mrs. Mere- 
dith?” 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


237 


She shook her head. “ No,” she answered, 
in a crestfallen tone. “ I have never been able 
to draw anything from him, though I have 
tried. But I am sure that I am right — that 
there was something between them in the 
past!” 

“ So am I,” he retorted, “but what good is 
there in being sure when one has no proof? 
You might have got that out of him if you 
had done no more ! But, even without proof, 
I have made up my mind to see what can be 
accomplished by threatening Mrs. Meredith 
with exposure. Totcjours raudace / She may 
believe that I know everything. Heavens ! if 
I only did — ” 

He glared at poor Lydia as if it were her 
fault that he did not, then turned abruptly to 
his father. “ If I fail in what I am going to 
try,” he said, “we must adopt a policy of 
stratagem. Drop all appearance of opposi- 
tion, but insist upon returning at once to 
Paris. The first and essential thing is to sepa- 
rate Aim^e from the Merediths. Separating 
her afterward from Kyrle will be compara- 
tively easy.” 

16 


238 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

“ She is — ah — um — very determined,” said 
the major. 

“ So is every girl who fancies herself in 
love ; what does that matter ? She will learn 
that her determination must bend before ours. 
For myself, I will hesitate at no means to ac- 
complish this. Are you not ready to say the 
same ? ” 

Under the challenge of that domineering 
and unscrupulous glance the major fidgeted, 
cleared his throat nervously, but finally spoke. 
“ Y es,” he said, “ I think that any means 
would be — ah — justifiable, to prevent a thing 
so mad as what she declares her intention of 
doing.” 

“Then everything is settled,” said Percy, 
with sharp decision. “ Make preparations for 
leaving Venice immediately. Whether I suc- 
ceed or fail with Mrs. Meredith, that must 
be done. Give Aimde no excuse for refus- 
ing to go. Promise anything now. Once 
away, she will be in our hands, and the rest is 
easy.” 

Even Lydia shuddered a little at the last 
words. To be in Percy’s hands, at Percy’s 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


239 


mercy, was surely a fate not to be desired, 
and that, she knew, was what it meant; for 
he ruled them all, and his father and step- 
mother would consent to whatever he pro- 
posed. With the last words he rose. 

“ Now,” he said, “ I am going to try intimi- 
dation with Mrs. Meredith. If I succeed, our 
work will be easier ; if I fail, nothing will be 
lost. In any event, we go.” 

Fanny Meredith was walking restlessly 
about her sitting-room, waiting for the news 
from Aim^e, which Aimde had not yet come 
to give. Lennox had looked in after his inter- 
view with Major and Mrs. Joscelyn, made his 
report, received the sarcastic congratulations of 
his ally on having brought about exactly the 
result she had predicted, and which she sup- 
posed he had desired, and then taken his de- 
parture — for he felt as if solitude was at that 
moment the only thing he craved — solitude to 
dwell upon the look and the tone of Aim^e 
when she put her hand in his as he was going, 
and said: “Do not let any of this trouble you. 
I shall not change.” Change ! He could have 


240 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


laughed at their folly in fancying they could 
change her. How well he knew that light in 
the brave, dark eyes, and the unflinching reso- 
lution which it indicated ! 

After his departure, Fanny looked for 
Aimde to appear shortly ; but as time went 
on and she did not come, Mrs. Meredith grew 
restless and impatient. What was the matter 
Even her courage shrank from bearding the 
lion in his den — that is, the enraged family in 
their own apartments ; but she decided that if 
Aim^e did not come soon, she would go and 
learn what detained her. It was just after this 
resolution had been formed that a knock at 
the door was followed by the appearance of 
Percy Joscelyn. 

He was perfectly calm in outward bearing, 
but his quietness of manner did not deceive 
Fanny for a moment. She knew in the first 
glance of his eye that he had come for war, 
and she felt at once scornfully ready to meet 
it. What could Percy Joscelyn say that would 
matter to her ? She threw back her head and 
met him with the weapon that always came to 
her most readily, that of mockery. 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


241 


“ Why, Percy,” she said, “ this is a very 
unexpected pleasure. It is not often you are 
good enough to come to see me alone. But I 
suppose you want to talk over such an inter- 
esting event as Aim^e’s engagement.” 

“ Not exactly,” replied Percy, blandly, 
though his glance became more venomous 
than ever. “ I do not consider that Aim^e’s en- 
gagement can take place without the consent 
of her parents and guardians ; but I wish to 
congratulate you on your success in getting 
rid of an old lover who might tell awkward 
stories, by the simple expedient of stopping 
his mouth with an heiress.” 

There was a moment’s pause. The gaunt- 
let had been flung down, and he stood with 
his hand on the back of a chair, waiting to see 
how she would take it up. As for Fanny, as- 
tonishment rather than lack of courage held 
her silent for the short space of time in which 
they regarded each other. Then she said, with 
more dignity than any one could have imag- 
ined her capable of displaying : 

“ So you have come simply to insult me. 
That, at least, makes matters clear. I under- 


r 


242 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


Stand and can allow much for your disap- 
pointment with regard to Aim^e ; but I do 
not intend to listen to such insinuations as 
you have just uttered. Be good enough to 
leave my room.” 

She lifted her hand and pointed to the 
door, but Joscelyn did not stir. On the con- 
trary, he held his position with an air of de- 
termination, as he held her glance by the stead- 
iness of his own. 

“It will not be well,” he said, “ for you 
to insist upon my leaving before I have fin- 
ished what I have come to say. I know that 
Kyrle was your lover before you were mar- 
ried, and that you jilted him for a richer man. 
In order to deceive that man, you have rep- 
resented him as having been the lover of 
Aim^e. This is a pretense which might blind 
Mr. Meredith, but nobody else ; and I hardly 
think it would blind him very long if one took 
the trouble to tell him the truth. Now, I do 
not propose that Aimee shall be bargained 
away to save your secrets, so I plainly give 
you your choice : send this fellow away, as I 
have no doubt you have the power to do, or 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


243 

Mr. Meredith shall know the whole truth 
about him and you ! ” 

“ My dear,” said Fanny Meredith after- 
ward, in describing the scene to Aimde, “ I 
was astonished at myself. You know I al- 
ways was a coward, and I had no doubt that 
the horrid wretch did know everything, as he 
said, and would tell it to Tom. But, for the 
life of me, I could not quail before him ! I felt 
such contempt for him, and such a sense of 
outrage that he should dare to threaten me 
in that manner, that I suppose it was anger 
that made me as brave as a lion.” 

Whatever was the force supplying cour- 
age, whether anger or disdain, she did not ex- 
aggerate in saying that she showed no sign of 
quailing before Percy Joscelyn’s threats. She 
drew her brows together, and her eyes blazed 
as they looked at him. In that instant he 
felt that he had made a mistake — that to in- 
timidate this woman was not possible. 

“ What a contemptible creature you are,” 
she said, in a clear, vibrating tone, “ and what 
a fool besides, to think that you could accom- 
plish anything with me by such a method as 


244 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


this ! I will not condescend to answer your 
insolent assertions and insinuations. If you 
can induce my husband to listen to you, you 
can tell him what you please. But understand 
once for all that every effort in my power shall 
be devoted to helping Lennox Kyrle to rescue 
Aim^e from any further association with such 
a person as yourself. Now will you go — or 
shall I be forced to ring for the servants to 
put you out of my apartment } ” 

Brave as a lion she surely was, or she 
would have shrunk from the impotent and 
vindictive rage that almost convulsed Percy’s 
countenance as he looked at her. There was 
little in his power to give which he would 
not have given at this moment to be able to 
crush her by some revelation such as he had 
hinted at, but which he now began to think 
had no existence in reality ; for it seemed to 
him impossible that any one whose conscience 
convicted her of the falsity charged, could 
have been so daring and defiant. No, he had 
made a mistake, and yet — 

What was this ? Why did Fanny’s ex- 
pression change so suddenly and greatly? 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


245 


Why did something like fear — yes, he could 
not be mistaken, it was fear — come into her 
eyes, as she looked past him at the door to 
which she had again haughtily directed him ? 
He turned quickly and faced Mr. Meredith, 
who paused astonished at the angry scene be- 
fore him. 

“ Fanny ! ” he said, involuntarily addressing 
his wife. 

Fanny felt as if her last hour had come, but 
to betray this to Percy Joscelyn was impossi- 
ble ! The spirit that was in her still kept her 
head erect and her manner dauntless, although 
it had not been able to keep from her eyes 
that sudden expression of fear which had 
leaped into them. She now addressed her 
husband with admirable composure, notwith- 
standing that there was a perceptible quiver 
of excitement in her voice. 

“ I have just requested Mr. Joscelyn to 
leave the room,” she said. “He has so forgot- 
ten himself, under the disappointment of 
Aim^e's engagement, that he has ventured to 
come here and threaten me — ” 

“Threaten you!” repeated Mr. Meredith, 


246 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

as she paused. He made a stride forward that 
brought him close to Percy Joscelyn, and then 
he stopped, controlling himself by an effort, 
but with all its usual genial expression gone 
from his face, and, instead, fierce indignation in 
every line. “ What is the meaning of this } '* 
he asked, sternly. “ Explain yourself! ” 

A bitter sneer curled the other's lip. He 
could not, indeed, explain himself as he should 
have liked to do ; he could not explicitly charge 
Fanny with duplicity which he only suspected, 
but he could at least throw a firebrand, and 
make, he fondly hoped, trouble between her- 
self and her husband. So it was that the sneer 
came as he looked at that gentleman. 

“ Mrs. Meredith seems to have regarded it 
as a threat," he said, “ that I requested her to 
use her influence over her old lover to induce 
him to relinquish his fortune-hunting scheme 
with regard to Aimee, or else I should have 
the pleasure of enlightening you with regard 
to some episodes of her past connected with 
that gentleman." 

It was a desperate venture, this speech, for 
if he had been asked for the episodes — But 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


247 

he fancied that he knew Tom Meredith too 
well to fear that, and the event proved him 
right. Mr. Meredith did not glance at his 
wife at all, but looked at Joscelyn himself with 
lowering brows and gleaming eyes. 

“You are a cowardly cur!” he said, dis- 
tinctly. “ My wife told you to leave the room. 
I now repeat the advice ; and if you do not 
follow it instantly, I shall be obliged to kick 
you out ! ” 

“ O Tom, Tom,” cried Fanny, hysterically, 
“ how good you were not even to gratify the 
wretch by listening to him 1 ” 

“Is it possible that you could have im- 
agined that I would } ” her husband asked. 
“ Then I can only say that you don’t know me 
very well yet. Even if I had believed what he 
implied, do you think I would have let him 
know it.^^ But how did such an idea enter 
his mind } ” he inquired after a moment, as he 
sat down. “Is he not aware that Mr. Kyrle 
was Aimee’s lover long ago } ” 

Fanny stood silent, motionless, incapable, it 
seemed to her, of movement or speech. Never 


248 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

had that old falsehood, told so lightly and 
heedlessly in the past, appeared to her so odi- 
ous, so black, so dishonorable as now ! Oh, 
what a vile return for her husband’s trust and 
goodness to let him still be deceived, still 
believe a thing which was not so, stilly be less 
wise (so she fancied) than Percy Joscelyn, still 
think her better than she was! No, if it lost 
her his love forever, if he never, never for- 
gave her the long deceit, she would tell him 
the truth now, while She had the saving grace 
and courage to speak. Perhaps Mr. Meredith 
had never in his life been more surprised 
than when she suddenly rushed forward, sank 
on her knees by his chair, and burst into 
tears. 

“ O Tom,” she said, “ I don’t know that 
you will ever forgive me for having deceived 
you so long, but I must tell the truth ! Len- 
nox Kyrle was never Aim^e’s lover at all. 
He was mine.” 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


249 


X. 

“ And he took it like an angel, my dear,” 
Mrs. Meredith said to Aim^e a few hours later. 
“ I never have credited Tom with any angelic 
qualities before, but I see now that it was be- 
cause I did not do him justice. No one could 
have been kinder. He seemed really touched 
that I confided in him at last, only, he said, 
it was a mistake not to have told the truth at 
the time ; and he was very severe about the 
false position in which you were placed. But 
I cried — Heavens, how I cried ! — so he could 
not scold very much ; and then he said he ap- 
preciated my telling the truth because it was 
entirely a voluntary act, since he was sure I 
did him the justice to believe he would never 
have listened to Percy Joscelyn. I did be- 
lieve it, and that was the reason I was forced 
to speak. When he trusted me so, I was 
ashamed to feel how I had deceived him ! ” 

“ I have often wondered,” said Aimee, 
that you did not feel it before.” 

“No doubt I ought to have done so,” re- 


250 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


plied Fanny, penitently, “ and perhaps I suf- 
fered more than you would believe ; for I 
feel now as light — oh, as light as a feather, 
to think that there is no more need for con- 
cealment. Lennox will be glad. He was 
always so desperately indignant about you. 
I really believe that he fell in love with you 
at that time.” 

Aim^e smiled a little. Probably Lennox 
had already told her so. 

“And what a pleasant thing it is, Mrs. 
Meredith went on, “ to reflect that this is the 
only result of Percy’s attempt to make mis- 
chief — the viper ! Aimee, do you know that 
there are dreadful possibilities of malice in 
that man ? I shudder when I remember the 
expression of his face as he stood there” — 
she pointed to the spot — looking at me. 
And what makes me shudder, is the thought 
of his having any power over you.” 

“ He has none at all,” said Aimee, a little 
haughtily. “ What is Percy Joscelyn to me ?” 

*'ToyouP — nothing. But he directs every 
act of your mother and stepfather, and there- 
fore he has a dangerous power over your life. 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


251 


I tell you frankly that I shall never feel that 
you are safe until you are married and out of 
their clutches.” 

“Safe from what ” asked Aim(§e, quietly. 

“Well,” answered Fanny, reluctantly, “I 
don’t want to be melodramatic, or I should 
say safe from danger. I believe Percy to be 
capable of any wickedness. I did not think 
so until to-day. Hitherto I have thought him 
more mean than wicked, but it was as if I 
looked down into his soul when he stood 
there gazing at me with hatred in his eyes, 
and what I saw there was as black as — as the 
bottomless pit ! ” ^ 

“ Fanny ! ” said Aimee, astonished and star- 
tled, for this flight of imagination was singu- 
larly unlike Fanny, who generally took things 
on the surface, and was not at all addicted to 
descending in fancy to the region of which 
she spoke. 

“ I mean exactly what I say, my dear,” re- 
plied her cousin, with energy. “ I assure you 
that I wish I could see you married to-mor- 
row.” 

“ It would have to be an elopement, then,” 


252 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


said Aim^e, with something between a smile 
and a sob, “ for I have just been informed that 
we are to return to Paris to-morrow.” 

“ Aim^e ! ” It was fairly a scream that 
Mrs. Meredith gave. “ You will not dream of 
consenting to go.^^” 

“What reason have I for refusing.^” the' 
girl asked, wistfully. “ I can not, without some 
reason, positively decline to accompany my 
mother. I have told them that I shall cer- 
tainly marry Mr. Kyrle ; but that has nothing 
to do with returning to Paris.” 

“It has everything to do with it ! ” said 
Fanny, in great excitement. “Why else should 
they think of taking you away in this man- 
ner.^ I tell you that they will hesitate at 
nothing when they have you alone with them. 
Aim^e, you must not go!' 

“ What would you have me do, then ? ” 
asked Aim^e. 

“ I would have you come with us.” (It 
had long been settled that the Merediths 
were to go from Venice to Vienna, while the 
question whether or not the Joscelyns should 
accompany them had been left open.) 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


253 


“ They would never consent,” said Aim^e, 
“ and I can not endure the thought of a 
struggle. When the time comes to part from 
them I should like it to be in outward peace; 
at least.” 

“ That can never be,” said Fanny, resolutely. 
“ Do not hope for it. They will never let you 
and your fortune go without a struggle. The 
only thing to do is to get this struggle over 
at once. Come with us and marry Lennox 
Kyrle in Vienna. Don’t tell me that you are 
not brave enough for it ! I am sure that you 
are brave enough for anything.” 

“ Brave enough to face danger — ^yes,” said 
Aim^e, simply, “ but not brave enough to face 
struggle, pain, bitterness — ” 

“ But you must face all those things if you 
remain with them, unless you buy peace by 
giving up Lennox Kyrle. For — do not deceive 
yourself — they will never consent to your 
marrying him ; and if you are resolved to do 
it, you must at last leave them in a more un- 
pleasant manner than this which I propose. 
Now, there is not the slightest difficulty about 
it, but if you were alone with them would it 
17 


254 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


be easy ? I fear that it might be impossible, 
and I should not be there to help you.” 

“ It is true,” said Aim^e, who was pale and 
greatly shaken. “It might be necessary here- 
after — under worse circumstances.” 

“ It would be necessary, and might be im- 
possible,” said Fanny. “Do you not see 
This is the golden opportunity. Ah ! ” — she 
rose quickly and ran to the window — “ I see 
some one who will help me.” 

She waved her hand to Kyrle, whose gon- 
dola was just drawing to the steps of the 
hotel. A moment later he was in the apart- 
ment and ready to second her proposal with 
all the eloquence that love could inspire. But 
even his eloquence might not have moved 
Aim^e if she had not felt that he was right ; 
that she was merely on the threshold of a 
struggle in which she might be worsted, since 
her opponents would be absolutely unscrupu- 
lous in the use of means. But Fanny and 
Lennox appreciated this, and both were ear- 
nest in urging her to take now a step which 
must be taken sooner or later. 

But she was still undecided, when an un- 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


255 


expected ally to the attacking force appeared 
on the scene. Mr. Meredith came in, and 
when he heard of the plan of the Joscelyns 
his honest wrath was stirred. “ What ! they 
propose to leave to-morrow, and carry you 
away with them ? ” he said. “ Then there is one 
simple thing to be done : I shall go at once 
and engage your passage with us on the Trieste 
boat which leaves to-night.” 

Aim^e rose and went up to him. The 
opinions of the others had not moved her as 
much as might have been expected. Fanny, 
she knew, was always inimical to the Joscelyns, 
and for Fanny’s judgment she had not great 
respect, while I.ennox labored under the dis- 
advantage of being a lover who appealed to 
her heart. In yielding to him she felt that she 
would be yielding to those dangerous guides, 
the feelings. But if this practical, unsenti- 
mental man thought she ought to go, that 
was a different matter. She laid her hand on 
his arm, and looked at him with her dark, ap- 
pealing eyes. 

“ Tell me,” she said, “ do you think I ought 
to go?” 


256 A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 

The appeal of her tone was as great as the 
appeal of her glance ; and the simplicity of her 
words touched the man whom she addressed 
more than anything impassioned could have 
done. 

“ My dear,” he said, kindly, “ I think that, if 
you are determined to marry this gentleman, 
the wisest thing you can do is to leave your 
family at once, for it will come to that at last ; 
and there is not only no good in deferring an 
evil day, but at another time you might not 
be able to command the protection which I 
am happy to offer you now.” 

“Just what I have told her,” cried Fanny. 
— “ Now, Aim^e, will you consent to go 

Aimde's glance passed wistfully from one 
to the other, and rested on Lennox. “ Yes,” 
she said at length, “ I will go.'’ 

Out into the night and the sea the steamer 
was moving, leaving the wonderful lights of 
Venice — a vision of an enchanted city — be- 
hind, while among the passengers on her decks 
one group of four persons watched rather si- 
lently the lessening radiance. They were all 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


257 


somewhat subdued in feeling by the fierce 
storm of opposition through which they had 
passed — a storm that had shaken Aim^e to 
the very center, yet had showed her the abso- 
lute necessity of this step. She stood now 
leaning on Kyrle’s arm, her gentle soul filled 
with sadness at the thought of the bitterness 
and anger she had left behind, although l)e- 
neath the sadness was a consciousness of free- 
dom of release from bondage such as she had 
never felt before. Presently her spirit would 
spread its wings like a bird in the sunshine, 
exulting in this new atmosphere ; but now she 
was silent, and Kyrle, divining what she was 
thinking, as well as her physical exhaustion 
after such stress of emotion, uttered himself 
no word, only pressed close against his heart 
the little hand resting on his arm. It was 
Fanny Meredith who said at last, with a sigh 
of relief : 

“Well, thank Heaven, it is over, and we 
are safe ; but I feel as if we had all eloped. 
— Don't you, Tom ? ” 

“ I can't say that I do,” her husband an- 
swered, with a laugh. “ But, by Jove, they 


258 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


were desperate! The major swore he would 
lock her up, and I swore that if he did I would 
break down the door. I should have done it, 
too, without a moment’s hesitation,” the speak- 
er ended. 

“Wouldn’t it have been simpler and less 
sensational to call in the police?” Fanny 
asked. 

“The police!” Mr. Meredith scornfully 
blew out a cloud of cigar-smoke. “ What the 
deuce could Italian police do in such a case? 
They would probably have arrested everybody, 
and kept us in Venice until proof could have 
been given of Aim^e’s age, and a lot of other 
nonsense. Do you suppose the Joscelyns 
would have hesitated to declare that she was 
still an infant? No; the simple and direct 
thing to do was what we did — carry her off by 
armed force.” 

“What was it you said to Percy Joscelyn 
when he followed us to the gondola?” Fanny 
inquired of Kyrle. 

“ I told him that if he came a step farther 
I should pitch him into the canal,” that gentle- 
man answered. “ Probably he was aware that 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


259 

it would give me sincere pleasure to do it, for 
he drew back” 

“ And yet people think that a fortune is a 
blessing!” said Aim^e, with a long, quivering 
breath. “ How gladly they would have let me 
go — as they did once — if it were not for my 
money 1 I felt like casting it to them, and bid- 
ding them take the only thing they cared for!” 

“ I am very glad you did not,” said Fanny, 
practically. “ They would have certainly taken 
it, and you have already cast them far too 
much. Don't abuse your fortune, my dear, be- 
cause the Joscelyns are despicable. Money is 
a good, a very good thing to have. I only 
wish you could make Lennox believe it ! ” 

Kyrle laughed. The strain of emotion 
was sufficiently relaxed now for laughter to 
become easy. “ I promise,” he said, “ to do 
exactly what she wishes with regard to my 
fortune.” 

“Ah,” replied Fanny, pettishly, “you only 
say that because you know she is as absurdly 
quixotic as yourself. It may be a very fine 
thing to be able to throw fortunes away,” the 
speaker pursued, “ but I am glad Tom has no 


26 o 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


temptations of the kind. — Come,” she said, 
taking that gentleman’s arm, “ I begin to feel 
the swell a little. Let us walk.” 

They passed down the deck, and the two 
left alone together stood silent for a moment, 
still watching the lessening lights of the fairy- 
like city. Then Kyrle turned his face seaward, 
to meet the fresh breeze that came from the 
wide sweep of the Adriatic, and his heart 
leaped within him, as if in answer to that 
boundless freedom of the sea. 

“This is not exactly the sea-gull yacht in 
which I longed to carry you away,” he said to 
his companion, “ but, although less poetical, it 
is still bearing us toward the region of our 
dreams — that mysterious distance out of which 
it seemed possible that all things might come.” 

“ You came out of it,” said Aimde, with a 
sound as of a smile in her voice. “ How well 
I remember the night on the sea wall of St. 
Augustine, when I waited for the sound of 
your oars, and presently you came from the 
sea, as now — ” 

“Now I am going back to it — with you,” 
he said, as she paused. “ There has been a long 


A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. 


261 


interval between the beginning and the end of 
the romance ; but it is fitting that the sea, 
which had a part in its beginning, should also 
have a part in the end. And I may be pre- 
sumptuous,’' he added after a moment, “ but I 
have no fear that we shall not find all our 
dreams awaiting us beyond that dim horizon of 
the future at which we gazed the other day.” 


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Introduction^ by Edward Eggleston. 

New York : D. APPLETON & CO., i, 3, & 5 Bond St. 



IMAGE FOUND AT 
SANTO DOMINGO. 




CARAVEL. • 



CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 


NOV -1 mif 


NEW JUVENILE BOOKS 


ENGLISHMAN’S HAVEN. 

By \V. J, CiORDON, author of “The Captain-General,” etc. With S 
full-page Tllustration.s. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 

“Other than boy readers will enjoy this story of a place founded, fortified, 
captured, and destroyed, all within a liietime, its history truly making it what the 
author calls it, one of the most notable of the world's dead cities.” — Providence 
yotirnal. 

THE BATTLE OF NEW YORK. 

By William O. Stoddard, author of “ Little Smoke,” “ Crowded out 
o’ Crofield,” etc. With ii full-page Illustrations and coh)rcd Frontis- 
piece. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 

“ This is such a story as makes a boy wish to steal away to some quiet nook 
where he is sure of being undisturbed ; for, once begun, it is next to impossible to 
lay it aside. The illustrations are numerou.s and beautiful.” — Baltimore American. 

ALONG THE FLORIDA REEF. 

By Charles F. Holder, joint author of “ Elements of Zoology.” 
With 71 Illustrations. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 

“ The exciting chases after turtle and shark, the visits to the haunts of the sea- 
gull, dives to the home of the queen-conch in the deep lagoon, the race with a 
water-spout, the experience with a hurricane, are actual happenings, not figments 
of Mr. Holder’s imagination.” — Boston Transcript. 

IN THE BOYHOOD OF LINCOLN. 

A Story of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black 

Hawk. By IIrzekiah Butterwortii, author of “ The Zigzag. 
Books,” “ The Log Schoolhouse on the Columbia,” etc. With 12 full- 
page Illustrations and colored Frontispiece. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 

“ Mr. Butterwortii gives stirring instances of the romance and reality of pioneer 
life in the days of the settlement of Illinois, and combines to a fortunate degree the 
art of entertainment with the serious “purpose of instruction.” — Boston Beacon. 

HERMINE’S TRIUMPHS. 

A Story for Girls and Boys. By M ADAME COLOMB. With 100 Illus- 
trations. 8vo. Cloth, $1.50. 

“ One of the most delightful of the books for girls this season is ‘ Hermine’s 
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deserved reputation.” — Book Buyer. 


For sale by all booksellers ; or will be sent by mail on receipt of price by the pitblishe7‘s, 

D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street, New York. 


RECENT FICTION. 

mm 


a 



GOD’S FOOL. 


m 


IJy Maarten Maartens, author of “ The Sin of Joost Avelingh.” 
i2mo. .Cloth, $1.50. 

“ Maarten Maartens has secured a firm footing in the eddies of current literature. 
His peculiarity of being able to present Dutch stories without the medium of trans- 
lation f which perforce robs a tale of flavor) gives him uncommon advantages. 
Pathos deepens into tragedy in the thrilling story of ‘ God’s Fool,’ as powerful a 
piece of work as ‘The Sin of Joost Avelingh.’ Men and manners in the Nether- 
lands are here painted with as careful a brush as any plied by the Dutch artists of 
long ago.” — Philadelphia Ledger. 

“ Not only the strongest work of the author yet given to the American public, ■ 
but it undoubtedly stamps him as the strongest of the Dutch novelists whose works 
have so far been republished in this country.” — Philadelphia Inquirer. 

“ No description of this work will fairly present its true character. It must be 
read quite through to be understood and appreciated. ' It is very full of suggestions 
as well as de.ccriptions, and each one of its fifty-two chapters is a marvej in itself.” 
— New York yozirnal of Cojunierce. 

“ A wonderfully interesting story, as need not be said when it is remembered that 
its author stands at the head of the Dutch school of novelists. It is Dutch in scene 
and tone, but it is a literary gem.” — PostoJi Traveller. 

“A masterly, story. Its power in character-drawing, and its vigorous portrayal 
of the strength and the weakness of human nature, are as fine as anything that 
contemporary fiction can show.” — Boston Saturday Evenitig Gazette. 

“Maarten Maartens is a Hollcnder who writes his romances in English, and 
good and strong English it is. As a psychological romance, ‘God’s Fool’ is far 
more than curious : it is instructive.” — New York Times. 


FROM DUSK TO DAWN. 


By Katharine P. Woods, author of “ Metzerott, Shoemaker.” i2mo. 
Cloth, $1.25. 


This book is an original one, like its predecessor, in that it follows none of the 
beaten paths of fiction, and it raises questions of vital interest, and addresses itself 
to the reader’s thought instead of merely tickling his fancy. There is a story, a 
romance, which will interest hovel-readers, but the book will hold the attention of 
those for whom the average novel has little charm. 


For sale by all booksellers ; or will be sent by mail on receipt of price by the publishers, 

D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street, New York. 



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